Good free news script?

[Jeff]

Does anyone know of one they'd recommend?

Yes, I know we were planning on integrating that into the forums, but there's no telling when Chris will be here so we at lest need a Plan B.

At most, this will only be a temporary thing until we can get the news forum idea set up.

[Phoenixsong]

Fusion News (http://fusionnews.net) is pretty good, IMO.

[Telume]

CuteNews (http://cutephp.com/)

I dunno what opinions are but I used CuteNews, I thought it was pretty good.

[Jeff]

I was going to go with CuteNews, but then I remembered Phoenixsong's post in the main thread saying to avoid it like the plague, thus I posted this thread.

[Telume]

Well like I said, I liked it, it's free, but it's up to you.

There was another script that I personally liked called NewsPro, I don't know if it's still out there but, it was pretty damn good at handling that stuff.

Like I said I don't know if its still around, chances are it's not but you could give it a shot. The last known version I remember though is 4.0.

Edit: Apparently it's not NewsPro anymore it's Coranto-4.0, older news script, but it might work if you want to give it a try. Site is Here (http://www.elektrik-sheep.com/coranto/)

[Bacterial Vaginosis]

You shouldn't even be in charge of the reviving a dead website if you need to ask something as basic as this.

[Blademaster]

JAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jeff]

*sigh* Jay, if you actually read the thread you'd realize I already know about CuteNews, but was told to avoid it. With dozens of free news scripts out there and no telling which ones are any good, it would be foolish not to ask for recommendations.

Anyway, since CuteNews is so popular, my biggest fear is that it might suffer from spambot attacks (much like our VB-based forum), so I'll probably end up going with Fusion News.

[Telume]

There IS another option, and I think that one would probably avoid you the trouble you fear.

And this is without a news script and setting it up is pretty easy IMO.

[Kirby]

JAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PEOPLE WITH OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE REDUNDANT SIGNATURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Heald]

http://www.ramasscreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/shatner-kirk.jpg

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!

Also, that's the end of this please. Can we return to at least the façade of civilised discussion we were maintaining before?

[Blademaster]

PEOPLE WITH OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE REDUNDANT SIGNATURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You're just jealous 'cuz you don't have a sig. :p


Also, that's the end of this please. Can we return to at least the façade of civilised discussion we were maintaining before?

You, me, Kirby, and Jay are in this thread. We can try, but I GREATLY doubt it.

So, what's this "another option" you speak of, Tel?

[Jeff]

He told me today on AIM.

He's proposing that we set up a separate forum to post the news to and have it displayed on the main page. That's similar to the original plan, except for the part where we do it on a separate forum.

My opinion on it is that that doesn't solve the separate login problem that we were trying to solve with the original plan, and it would be overkill to set up a separate forum just for news posting. The advantage of it though is that we'd be able to have good control over it, so we can avoid spambots trashing our homepage.

[Dark-San]

Go with Cutenews in my opinion. My scanlation group uses it as their main page. It is user- friendly and I don't think it will complicate the news posting process.

[Blademaster]

If you guys DID set up a second forum, would both forums have to use the same script? I mean, seeing as CuteNews seems to be kind of an iffy thing here, it might be nice to use it on the lesser, secondary forum and have the more reliable script run the main forum.

P.S. I have NO clue what I'm talking about. I dunno what scripts are or how they work. I'm just tossing things out in the hope that something I say makes sense.

[Jeff]

A news script is something that allows us to set up a news-posting system without setting anything up on the forum. However, since it's independent from the forums it requires a separate login. The other plan we had was to post the news in the forums instead of using a news script. Chris said he'd set something up like that for us, but I haven't heard back from him yet.

Anyway, Phoenixsong, I'm curious. Why'd you say we should avoid CuteNews?

[Telume]

Well, Jeff already told me the reason he disagrees with setting up another set of forums just to do this is because it's overkill.

He's right on some counts but since only the newsposters really will know it there's a few things we can do to get it working for that purpose and protect the forum from spam. Downside is that people can't comment on the news, which is why having the news forum on THIS forum would be nice.

[Phoenixsong]

A news script is something that allows us to set up a news-posting system without setting anything up on the forum. However, since it's independent from the forums it requires a separate login. The other plan we had was to post the news in the forums instead of using a news script. Chris said he'd set something up like that for us, but I haven't heard back from him yet.

Anyway, Phoenixsong, I'm curious. Why'd you say we should avoid CuteNews?

Mostly because it's had a history of being very poorly maintained and quite vulnerable, as well as riddled with little errors that don't necessarily interrupt normal function but look very sloppy and would present a bad image on the front page of the site. A while ago (a few months to a year, I don't remember) someone went around hacking into every CuteNews installation he could find, apparently to "tell people to upgrade to the new version that had finally been released". I know that that was at least a few months ago and I don't think they've come out with a new release since then.

Dark-San is right, it is simple and it does work and so it's not like the site will explode if we use it (hopefully), but it's become a bit of a risky gamble these days and is developing a rather poor reputation among serious webmasters (most of whom would probably recommend something more custom anyway, like a feed from the news forum). At the very least I haven't heard any horror stories about Fusion News hacking epidemics and it's been reliable for as long as I've used it, but I really think it'd be best for us to use the news forum anyway if it can be finagled.