Server Setup

Select the Servers object from the Navigation pane and click the “New” button at the top of the screen. You can also right-click on the server list and select “New Server” from the context menu.

The Server Configuration window will appear:


Server Name - The name Newsman should display in the Servers view.

Server Address - The IP or Internet address for the server.

Port - The NNTP port to use. Port 119 is the standard port used by most servers.

Max Connections - The maximum number of connection allowed by your news server. Newsman supports up to 99 connections per server.

Limit header retrieval connections to - Limits the number of connections that Newsman Pro can use to retrieve headers.

Reserved for small articles - Reserves the selected number of connections for small articles (as defined in Settings).

Retry Limit - The number of times a connection will retry if an error is detected.

Session Reset Timer - When a connection retries, the news server is disconnected to force a session reset. This timer sets the number of seconds Newsman Pro will wait before reconnecting. Setting this value too low can cause Newsman Pro to reconnect before the news server has reset the session.

Use Message-ID instead of article index - If your server supports it, enabling this option allows Newsman to ask for articles using their unique Message-ID rather than the article number.



Authentication - If you are required to authenticate with a username and password, enable this section and fill in the appropriate items.

Connection Type - If you use a dialup modem to connect, select "Dialup Networking", otherwise, use "LAN or Direct".

Exclude headers from count - Does not count headers in your total download counters.

Enable server limit - If your server only allows you to download a certain amount during a period, enable this option to have Newsman monitor your downloads and stop downloading automatically when the limit is reached. You can also tell Newsman when the next period begins and Newsman will reset the counter and start downloading from this server automatically.

Body Download Priority - Using priorities, you can tell Newsman in which order servers should be checked when downloading articles. Newsman always downloads articles using the Message-ID for servers that are not used to get headers.

Server priorities are a useful way to limit the amount you download from a pay server that limits your download quantity. When creating your Workgroups, you should add newsgroups to each Workgroup from the server that gives you the best completion and retention. Usually, premium servers are best for this purpose. Then you can set your premium (pay) server at a lower priority than a server that gives you cheaper access (like your ISP's news server) and Newsman will go to the ISP server first and only download from your premium server if the article can't be found on the ISP server.

Beginning with v2.0, you can assign multiple servers to a single server priority. This allows Newsman to use more than one server to download articles until all servers within the current server priority have been checked.

Newsman also allows you to have an unlimited number of "private" news servers. You should never include these types of servers in the server priority list as you will want Newsman to download articles only from the server from which the headers came from.