[K12OSN] Re: Groupware recommendations?

steven at Stevensantos.com steven at Stevensantos.com
Mon Nov 1 19:20:23 UTC 2004


>> (http://www.firstclass.com/) (nice product...I'm using it right now to

> We switched from firstclass (which I HATED, it was horrible for me!  Are
> you running it on a mac server?  Mine required OS9.0.4...  Oh the
> horrible server-locking-up memories... but I digress) and the staff was
> very upset when they lost the program.  I never did find a program that
> would take it's place, and have settled for just web-based email
> (squirrelmail) since that's what 95% of the staff used FC for.

> If you find a workable solution, please share with the list. :)

Ahh that was the day.  I ran a Firstclass once upon a time. GComm and
WildCat! are still sold in this nitch, but if you are looking for OSS, the
only one I know of (also based on an old school BBS system) is
www.synchro.net (Win + Linux versions).  Development looks a bit stagnant,
but it is OSS.

If I were to recreate this functionality (and ditch the nostalgia), I think
I would just set up an NNTP server (if you don't already have one), and then
add PHPNuke/PHPBB (7.1), Newssync (for NNTP groups), FMC (for mailing lists)
and one of the many Nuke email front ends to your web server.  I recently
saw an add-on for PHP-Nuke 7 that uses LDAP authentication (and PHPBB
authenticates against Nuke).  A little tweaking and I bet you could even
make the system use existing groups (stored in LDAP) to control access to
forums and such, for the most part eliminating the need to maintain two
databases.  This way students (and teachers) would have access to what they
need regardless of what they use and where they are, and it should continue
to work with any existing email/NNTP setups to boot.

Or maybe try one of the exchange replacements (I haven't done that yet...).

Food for thought.





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