Netnews for Drupal

This project was sponsored by Google Summer of Code 2005

Netnews for Drupal is a module for the Drupal content management system. This module extends Drupals forum module with the option to synchronize a forum and a netnews newsgroup.

Possible use of Netnews for Drupal includes:

offering an alternative way (usenet) to access the contents of a Drupal webforum
making selected usenets groups available through a Drupal based website
export the contents of a forum to a newsgroup
provide a startup community website with a living forum by importing a newsgroup
using a Drupal website as a web-based newsreader for selected newsgroups

The module does not change the behaviour of the forum module. When activated and provided with a configured bi-directional link between a forum and a newsgroup, it takes care of the following:

a new topic in the forum is sent to the newsgroup as a post with a new subject
a comment to a topic in the forum is sent as a followup to the newsgroup (provided that the topic was also sent to the newsgroup)
a new post with a new subject in the newsgroup is inserted into the forum as a new topic
a followup to a post in the newsgroup is inserted into the forum as a comment to the corresponding topic, provided that the topic itself was also inserted into the forum

In addition, the following features are available:

the way messages in the forum are owned is configurable
quotes of complete previous messages can be stripped. Many newsreaders (and their users) do not restrict themselves at all when it comes to quoting messages that they reply to. In web based forums, such quoting behaviour results in very long, [onoverzichtelijke] pages. The module can detect and strip quotes of complete messages.
synchronization can be one-way, allowing a Drupal site to "publish" the content of a forum into a newsgroup, or make a newsgroup available read-only to the users of the web site.

This module was inspired by my failure to understand the reason for the unconnectedness of web based forums and newsgroups. Google sponsored this project in the Summer of Code 2005 program. You can read more about the inspiration and the Summer of Code here.