CSH WebNews is a web-based NNTP client written in Ruby on Rails, designed exclusively for use with the internal newsgroups and authentication systems of Computer Science House at RIT. The goal of the project was to create a full-featured replacement for desktop NNTP clients (e.g. Thunderbird), so that users would no longer need to download, install, or configure anything in order to participate in internal CSH discussions.


(click to enlarge – images are anonymized to maintain privacy)

WebNews features a resizeable Thunderbird-esque interface with a collapsible threaded message view, reading pane, and read/unread post tracking. Navigation is ajax-based and all interface elements are updated "live", with no full page loads. In addition to reading and posting, users can search through over 40,000 archived posts dating back to 1999.

WebNews development began in August 2011 and is still ongoing, with new features (such as a full set of keyboard shortcuts) being added at a slow but steady pace, along with performance improvements and fixes for user-reported bugs. From a personal standpoint, the project has been and continues to be a great platform for my Rails learning, and I'm certainly not done with it yet.

Source Code

Source code is freely available on GitHub at https://github.com/grantovich/CSH-WebNews. The GitHub issue tracker is also used by myself and other CSH members to track bug reports and feature requests.