A new web newsreader

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Friday, 9 December 2011 at 09:17:11 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> That should be doable but I should say I have a mild preference 
> for directories because every subdomain operation would need a 
> roundtrip to the website admin.

We need to decide on one URL structure and stick to it. Breaking 
links is bad.

A few people commented on the app's fast speed, so I'd hate to 
introduce an artificial bottleneck there.

Note that subdomains are tied to the DNS system, not web hosting. 
For example, I see that d-p-l.org was registered by Brad and is 
hosted on PureMagic's name servers, so he would be the person to 
contact regarding subdomains on d-p-l.org. 
d-programming-language.org is hosted on ns0/1.digitaldaemon.com 
and is registered to Walter.

You can make subdomains a CNAME (like an alias). That way, if I 
move servers, you won't need to bother whoever is responsible for 
the DNS records.

There are also some security considerations with attachments. We 
need to either have a separate subdomain for attachments, or 
forbid viewing them in the browser (which would mean that viewing 
non-whitelisted attachments, including HTML parts, would need to 
force a download). Gmail uses googleusercontent.com for 
attachments, for example.

> Essentially I'm looking at achieving a streamlined process that 
> would allow me to type "make rsync" and deploy the whole thing. 
> See 
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/d-programming-language.org/blob/master/linux.mak. 
> The process of generating an up-to-date site should be 100% 
> automated.

How about this: the makefile pings an URL on my server, which 
runs a script that downloads the files from 
http://d-programming-language.org/, patches and installs them?

A completely different approach would be to host the program on 
DigitalMars servers, but I'm worried that maintenance will become 
very difficult without access to it.

> Oh, I was thinking of merging at file/archive level on the 
> server, which would involve no work on your part. But let's not 
> spread ourselves too thin.

Yeah, that's what I meant. NNTP clients make assumptions 
regarding pre-existing server state which I don't see a way to 
maintain while merging group content.

> One thing I remembered from my list of nits - would be great to 
> have votes like on reddit... but first I'd say let's go head to 
> toe through one release of this software. I'll be looking 
> forward to your integration ideas.

This is a complicated issue - mainly due to the possibility of 
abuse. Reddit has complicated heuristic algorithms for detecting 
misbehavior and balancing votes, built up from years of 
experience. Even though their code is open, it's probably not 
worth the effort. We could make little attempt to police votes, 
but then they would lose meaning as soon as someone bored enough 
comes along.