I am using the old version of gateway.php (The one that worked with the Beta versions of VB3 where you had to edit the database by hand to add newsgroups)

I am thinking of upgrading to this version. :)

Do I need to do anything to make this version work, such as

Delete all current Newsgroup forums? (To prevent messages in these forums from being sent back out to the Internet)
Do I need to delete any of the old database enteries?

Anything else I need to do to upgrade from the old version?

Thanks for your help and for what appears to be a great hack!

Not 100% sure but I do not think there has been any DB changes... I went from the edit by hand DB to the new version with no issues.

Great did you have to empty your existing newsgroup forums? Or was it fine?

I just dont want to send all the messages I have now to be sent back out to usenet. :)

I''ve been using this since vb 2.30 - upgraded to vb3 and then 3.01. Have upgraded the script several times and have *never* had to empty existing newsgroup forums. The script just works :)

Nope... did not have to empty... The major changes are just the way the gateway works and pulls the new messages as well as the admin i face now.

I am having a look at this now, however I don't have any mailing lists which makes it difficult to test.

The way I have it working is, the administrator enters the characters or phrases that starts the footer message into a setting in the cpanel (not the whole footer, just enough that it is 'unique' and is not likely to form part of a genuine message).

You can enter as many different footers as required.

Every mail message gets checked against these, and if there is a match, strips everything from that point onwards from the message. Usenet messages are ignored.

The only situation where this wouldn't work is where a footer is quoted in someone elses reply, and they then bottom post their message beneath this. From memory of using mailing lists I don't recall this happening often, but I need a guide from you. (It would be ton easier to not have to worry about this :nervous: .)

Let me know if this approach will work for your lists, and will you be able to test the script?

KevinM, that is exactly the kind of solution I was hoping for :) The footers in the mailing lists I use alwasy start with the same text and all text after that can be ignored. I'm not too concerned about the quoted footer text myself, so whatever would be easier for you. I would be happy to test it.

Lierduh, are you still supporting this hack? I haven't seen you comment in over a week so I was just wondering.

What this does:

If you are using this hack to mirror mailing lists you will often find that the mailing list operator adds their own footer to each message which can be quite large.

This function will strip this from the message, prior to insertion into the forum. It can handle multiple different footers (just surround each one with { and }).

I have tested this on a test forum, but I am looking for feedback from a live enviroment.

I'll give this a go, thanks!

It worked just as I had hoped it would, thanks for taking the time to write that. :D Messages look much less cluttered now.

One issue that I'm still having is that the vast majority of the mailing list posts are not being threaded and are showing up as individual posts. I thought it may have been an issue of the title changing when people reply and it adds an "RE:" to various places in the subject (see my previous post #140), but after looking at it more closely, posts with the exact same subject are showing up as seperate threads:

http://orthotechforum.com/images/mlist.gif

I can't figure out why some (very few) posts are threaded but others with the same subject are not. Admittedly, I know zero about coding, but shouldn't it be pretty straightforward to determine which replies should be threaded based on the subject title? I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the "Use Post Time" setting. The default is set to use the time stamp when the messages are imported, which means that all of the posts at the time of import have the same time stamp. I changed it to use the original post time, thinking that posts with the same title and same timestamp might somehow be throwing off the threading. I'll test this and see how it works. Any idea though why the posts are threading correctly?