Newsgroup Blog & Usenet Reviews

I started working with Usenet back in 1987.  In about 1993 I started converting Perl scripts that I was using to find and track free Usenet servers on the internet to display in a web page.  Those early pages were crude, no search, just a daily result links and black with green text (old monochrome monitor habit).  That quickly evolved into my website that allows users to search for newsgroups on free and commercial servers; Freenews is the oldest newsgroup search site on the internet and has allowed visitors to browse for web servers with newsgroups they are interested in since before the internet really even went commercial.

In the last few years Freenews has evolved further to include reviews of Newsgroup servers and clients, etc.  But, much of the content still comes from Perl scripts written almost 20 years ago.  So, in an attempt at simplifying my life and being able to allow other authors generate and maintain my content I have been looking at various CMS packages such as Joomla & Drupal, but neither was a great fit for me.  I also tried putting it all into a wiki, with equally dissatisfying results.  Finally, I started looking at blogging software, and although it is not a “perfect” fit, it meets most of the requirements I had, plus I have figured out how to tweak it with shortcodes and my old Perl scripts to allow dynamic content.

So, here it is, my constantly evolving site of reviews of the best Usenet servers and newsreaders along with information on the rest. In addition I have lists of Usenet providers that have free Usenet trials and special offers available from my site.  In the future you can expect reviews for newsgroup search engines, NZB sites, VPNs and Online storage as these companies continue to expand their services.