ZWNews

Instead you order by sending an email to sales@zwave.com. Just say that you want to order ZWNews Release Candidate 01 and how many licenses you intend to buy at $299 (U.S.) per license. Each license is good for one server and you can pack as many domains onto that server using ZWNews as you like. If you need more than one server though, you have to get a license for each. We think that's reasonable and hopefully so do you. After you send your email we'll generate an invoice that you can pay online with a check (don't worry, it's as secure as a credit card).

What you get for your money is a copy of files you need to do installation of ZWNews (you may have to download additional files if you need to install Microsoft Data Engine or SQL Server 7.0 Service Pack 2). After your check clears we will send you a second email with a copy of the source for ZWNews.dll and a fresh version of the DLL that has no expiration date built in (the first one expires after two weeks).

You also get access to a mailing list to help you get the product installed and answer questions about customizing or extending it with new capabilities. There will be quite a few extensions in the future that are planned from our end but customers were telling us they needed the product now so we are shipping without the examples of XML/XSL (the ability is in there but we don't have any simple examples to show it off) or the ability to add related links to each story.

• You can provide submission pages that allow your users to enter news items. Those items can be posted immediately or you can review and edit each one before it appears with the rest of your news.

• Has the ability to make a selection of your news available in RSS format so your news can appear as a news channel on http://my.netscape.com. Many people use this site as their portal page and with ZWNews they can view your news regularly as they check the weather, get news from other sites, get their stock reports. etc. Your news can also be viewed by visitors to http://my.userland.com and users of the program Carmen's Headline Viewer. (Click the picture to see my my.netscape.com page with the GameDev.net channel created using ZWNews v. 4)

• Stories can have an associated icon or picture that appears in the standard layout for news. This makes it easy to do sites like the popular Slashdot.org.
• Stories can have a list of associated web links.
• Each story can be tagged with any number of categories. Filtering can occur on a set of categories (or exclusion of a set of categories) in order to tailor news to the desires of individual readers.
• Administration pages are provided so you can add/edit/(un)approve/or delete news stories.
• The various formats work with corresponding style sheet entries so that the colors, fonts, sizes, etc. of the elements can be changed to match the look and feel of your site.
• Filter your news by date (perfect for news archives), approval, maximum number of stories to show, and story number.
• News can be scheduled to appear only after a certain date and can also have an expiration date set.
• A component and SQL Server stored procedures are used in order to maximize performance. ZWNews is currently in use at websites receiving over 2 million visits a month.
• Full source for the Visual Basic component is included.
• Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) is provided for sites which don't use SQL Server 7.0. Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 7.0 and MSDE is included to update existing databases.