Membership Services: NewsUpdate

NewsUpdate Case Study: Zophar's Domain
Note: this is only a possible solution, not necessarily their current solution

The Situation:

Zophar's Domain posts news on their main page and a news-only page. They also want to place their Unix related news in a separate file that other servers can download and use.

Getting the same news on two pages is easy enough if you use SSI (more on that later). The challenge is getting a Unix news only file with a format that an automated program can easily pick apart.

The Proposal:

Use a 'zdnews' FTP account for NewsUpdate with a directory structure like this:

/zdnews/
   news.usr
   news.cfg
   news.dat
   web/
      news.inf
      unixemu.txt
      oldnews/

Here's the news.usr:

XiP:20wV/RfE2PP4w:::/personal/XiP.gif
emufreak:34kAv5swL0lo.:207.103.93.84:930724874:/personal/emufreak.gif
bnu:38DXgMHwKcL.k:198.110.21.135:930726410:/personal/bnu.gif
alamone:test:::/personal/alamone.gif

In this sample, XiP has not been used (note there's no IP address or timestamp yet). Alamone has just been added and the password will be encrypted the next time NewsUpdate is used. The last item (field #5) is for the %UserA% token (used as an icon in this case).
Note: don't bother cracking the passwords. They're all 'test'.

Here's the news.cfg:

-- Config Category = Site News, Emulator News, Emulator Release, Staff Changes, Misc. News Platform = PC, Macintosh, Unix, Other Title = Body = Tagline = Thanks to CHANGE ME for the news KeepDays = 2 -- End -- Start news.inf File = news.inf ArchiveDir = oldnews -- Daybreak <center><table border=2 bgcolor="#000000" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2> <tr><th>%date%</th></tr></table></center> -- Format %Category%: %Title% <IMG SRC="%UserA%" alt="%login%" width=50 height=17 border=0> %time%   %Body% %tagline% -- End -- Start unix File = unixemu.txt Platform = Unix -- Format :Start %timestamp% %Title% %Body% %Tagline% :End %timestamp% -- End

Note that platform is never seen by visitors (it's not in any Format). In fact, 'Platform = Unix, Not Unix' would accomplish the same goal. The 'unix' template is limited to posts about the Unix platform while 'news.inf' covers all platforms.

On the Add News page, tagline will default to a short thank you note.

Items older than 2 days will be moved to a file in the 'oldnews' directory and saved in the 'news.inf' format.

The 'news.inf' template will result in /zdnews/web/news.inf on the FTP side, which is http://www.zophar.net/news.inf on the WWW side. Thus the main page and news-only pages can SSI it in using

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Last updated July 1, 1999 by Brian Rahn