Configuration File with Contents

Here is what a news board file looks like with some posts in it:

ROOT

 {

 Perm_Pass:TEST = rads

 Perm_Default = rad

 AutoIrcTopic = «m«DeJ1y.8b/»m»

 AutoLogFilename = newslog.txt

 DATA = CHECKDATES

         {

         71372602380a03a44d084bda938eee76 = 1030203500

         8b13f6ca3cd43fcc828da4666333063f = 1030020078

         58842d35accfa02bdd7ea4d8e99dad26 = 1030038566

         }

 SECTION = «m«TazUvP14ivjt0»m»

         {

         Label = «m«neSt0NvpDT0z6Oye1lRcAA/PsW8d1O6KFp0»m»

         ITEM = «m«g.tf/5Bcs21UpLXV1OS4Qa1GpgWK.YQdMr1JuSxn0gyice/»m»

                 {

                 NICK = «m«nDZlH17.8UJ0i2ECr0ePzFd0»m»

                 CHAN = __NOCHAN__

                 ADDDATE = 1030141655

                 }

         ITEM = «m«yERX0u1e3b03MLqR/.Wrgz0tXQgOd0gBo31/RHypTG1SOhFQ.nvml8/»m»

                 {

                 NICK = «m«nDZlH17.8UJ0i2ECr0ePzFd0»m»

                 CHAN = __NOCHAN__

                 ADDDATE = 1030141727

                 }

         }

 SECTION =  «m«DeJ1y.8b/»m»

         {

         Label = «m«m/idOa030xqso1dzfNw.qDuVL0»m»

         NoDefaultShow = true

         ITEM = #testchan - «m«kTxlL.qixyw0aAwA.a/M2MZgP1B7PQ60WHhmge.bBrRl1WuVcoY.»m»

                 {

                 NICK = tester

                 CHAN = #testchan

                 ADDDATE = 1030166219

                 }

         }

 }

Each section has a short name (the value following the Section=) and a longer label.

Note that section titles and labels are encrypted, as are actual post items and the nicks of the posters.

The DATA=CHECKDATES section keeps track of the last date/time that a given user has checked for new news.  This let's users request to see only new items since their last check.  The MD5 cryptographic hash function is used to associate user idents with a date in such a way that the ident cannot be recovered using the data stored in the configuration file.

Addendum: The CHECKDATES field is now mostly obsolete - the newsboard now keeps track for each entry on board, of exactly users have read it (in a safe way that would not allow reverse-name lookup).  This allows the board to truely keep track of what news is new to each user, even when they check from a different ip/bnc.  See the section on configuring the Newsbot for more info.

The NoDefaultShow variable is used in the automatic topics section to tell the news board that the contents of this section are only shown when explicitly asked for.

Caution:

The last section is automatically updated by the news server with topics as they are changed on the channel, as can be seen by the fact that the AutoIrcTopic is set to the name of this section.  Note that the NICK and CHAN of posts in this section are not encrypted by default.  Because this information is publically available on the irc server itself, it is not considered much of a security risk.  However, you can disable this by setting the variable Paranoia = true at the root.  This will tell the news server not to record the channels and nicks used in automatic topics, which will eliminate this, but also prevent the autoirc section from recording  who changed topics and in what channels.