Good free news script?

[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?

[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.