Can this be set up to work exclusively with only one news group?

Edit:
Man that was a dumb question. IT'S WORKING GREAT!
I'm clicked in on 3.0.

It can be set up to use as many or as few as you wish, yes.

See my forums for an example of it in action: www.maximumgamer.com/forums

Note that I have also installed the User Agreements Hack specifically for use with this hack - when you first go to view any of my newsgroup forums (I have 3 currently) you have to agree to the rules specific to that forum before you can go on. It works with guests to (although when you delete your cookies you'll have to agree to it again). I mainly use it to warn my regular members that they are entering wild country:).

I also installed the Exclude Forums From Search hack which allows users to specify forums they don't want to see when they click "New Posts" or "Today's Posts".

I love this hack, very useful and gets people interested in my forums - I am looking in to adding more newsgroups even. This is with vb 3.5 gold.

@lierduh

have you any ideas about the tricky problem at posting #118 ?

Hi,

We are going to install this on a test board (thats why i havnt clicked install yet),

But we are having problems with installation, mainly how do we install, the readme seams to be outdated, or are we reading it wrongly.

Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance

News servers do not hold all posts from id 1. They purge older ones regularly. What you see is the max ID number, not total number of posts.

The readme is outdated as it was written for vB3.0x. However you can always ask which part that you find confusion.

Folks, I had been waiting for Gold before releasing a new version. Now that the Gold is out, but I have been busy with other hacks and I will travel overseas in two days time. So there is no chance we can see a new version for at least two weeks. Everytime I push something out quickly, I tend to introduce many bugs. So I would rather not push it.

I just checked the code. No, it will not send messages if send_message=0, however if you change this to 1 later on. All the held messages will be sent!

No, this hack does not support IMAP. It was originall written for NNTP, that is why a lot of settings names etc. are tied to news instead of mails. No fixed date is planed at the moment to include IMAP support. This hack has become complicated for new users because all the settings I introduced from the past requests. The total number of users are not that many anyway.

I'm having a problem, suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Following the readme and using the ms newgroup given as an example, I got to section 6:

6. Run the script for the first time by going to
http://www.yourserver.com/vbdir/gateway.php?debug=1
This will take
a while if you are importing a lot of posts for the first time.
Depending on your browser, it may buffer the output and it may
appear like it's hanging. Be patient. :)

I enter:

http://www.edinburghtalk.com/vbdir/gateway.php?debug=1

but Firefox just displays my domain's homepage. IE does the same. No hanging as described in the readme, no usenet posts appear in the forum (http://www.edinburghtalk.com/forum/f...play.php?f=31).

I wasn't sure if the "vbdir" part of the example URL is meant to be replaced by the actual path I my forum uses, so, I also tried

http://www.edinburghtalk.com/forum/gateway.php?debug=1

... but in both FF and IE that results in the following error:

<br /><strong>Warning</strong>: main(/home/edtalk/public_html/forum/includes/nntp.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in <strong>/gateway.php</strong> on line <strong>52</strong><br /><br />
<b>Fatal error</b>: main(): Failed opening required '/home/edtalk/public_html/forum/includes/nntp.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in <b>/home/edtalk/public_html/forum/gateway.php</b> on line <b>52</b><br />


Any ideas?

{[H:geilen]}{[H:!!!!]}{[H:***]}{[H:$$]}{[H:MAKE MONEY]}{[H:easy money]}{[H:test]}{[H:smoking gun]}{[H:Humour]}{[H:ebay]}{[H:e-bay]}{[H:dating] AND [B:girl]}

Edit: It works!

Is there any way to make {[H:test]} not kill "testing"?

Lierduh,

could you be so kind to correct the advanced hacking guide ? 3.5 is already out :nervous:

Wether there is a second instance nor a $quickreply as you mentioned before in this particular template. Could you update those instructions please ?

Can someone tell me how to limit the size of the 'from_name' field when importing groups ?

in some posts the size become long and that force the width size when displaying forums list.

Thank you,

Can anyone give me some pointers in dealing with my problem, described a few posts above (#128)?

I'd very much appreciate it if someone could get me moving in the right direction.

donnacha, the author of this scrpt is overseas at the moment so it might be some time before you get an educated answer. However, it looks like your site defaults to your home page as its 404 Error page. I suggest you check that all the files included within the zip file are placed exactly where they are meant to be (the file unzips into its correct directory structure).

Read the readme.txt file again. Your error messages suggest that you may not have all the files in the correct location.

You must always refer to your OWN path to your OWN forums. The example provided is just that - an example! It won't work on your setup.

how are you guys automating gateway.php to run?

script seems to be running fine if I manually go the URL with

/gateway.php?debug=1

I don't think this has to do with the DC Seo URL Rewrite plugin but I get the error:

actually its those two lines that have to be added to showthread.php per instructions.

actually its those two lines that have to be added to showthread.php per instructions that cause the error message.

Hallo,
I have two questions:
1. is it possible to set this plugin to autorefrash the newsgroup becouse now I have to load gateway script to update latest posts from newsgroup.
2. Is it possible to set small message e.g "This message was send from MyDomains.com" when people are sending a messeges to the newsgroup from my forum.

Hope you understand my poor english :)

Neobud, thank you so much for your kind advice, I now have now have Usenet forums up and running at my site, www.edinburghtalk.com.

It turned out that the problem was down to a mistake (or, rather, omission) in the readme.txt, obviously there's a fair amount of stuff that hasn't been updated.

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to address my problem, and thanks to Lierduh for making this incredible extention available for vb3.5 - it's going to make a huge difference to users of sites like mine.

I am now concentrating on making this more usable, in particular I want to find a way to make the "remove Reply button, use Quote buttons instead" amendment more user friendly, possibly by using a different version of the Quote button in Usenet forum or, perhaps, a repeated reminder throughout such threads.

Has anyone successfully implemented posting? If so, what usenet provider do you use and at what cost?

I spent quite a while checking out the free servers but couldn't find any that allow posting and there seem to be questions of reliability, so, I started comparison-shopping among the most highly recommended pay services.

Under the assumption that our usage won't need as much download-allowance as the average usenet user downloading gig after gig of warez and pron, I decided that the best option was to buy 25gigs, non-expiring, from http://www.news.astraweb.com/ for a once-off payment of $10.

So far, the intensive initial sent up (involving downloading 10,000+ posts stretching back a month or so) and few days of updating, has used up about 6k of my 25G. At this rate, that $10 should cover me for several years!

One important thing to note is that I haven't actually experimented with posting although I can confirm that their server is sending back headers indicating that my account is allowed to post.

Posts on my forums have been sucessful and it's great to see my domain being picked up by google because of it :)

I use newshosting.com and it's $15 a month for unlimited bandwidth. If you use newhosting, you'll need to enable posting via their online CP but after that, it works a treat.

Good luck.

Interesting, how did you realize that google had picked you up? Do you use some sort of tool to check your google-ranking?

They were one of the companies I heard good things about, I think it was down to them, Giganews and a handful of others. If I was also using Usenet to download binaries etc I would probably consider an unlimited monthly account but, for NNTP Gateway alone, I think a one-off payment of $10 is enough.

These one-off accounts are also said to be pretty handy as a "fill-in" server, for when a few parts of something you're trying to download from your unlimited server are missing.

is this addon working fine ?
i have vb 3.0.7 installed, will upgrade today, need to confirm if there are any problems with 3.5 version in advance ?

thank you

Hello!

My bord is in Japanese, and using S_JIS encoding,
and I can use original vbllutein,
but can not your module.

Would you please give advice for using this module in Japanese?

I was all set to go with this until I saw "personal use only" in the terms of service.

I've got to do something. My freebie dried up:
Gateway version 2.3.2 2 group(s) gatewayed.
Could not connect to NNTP-server. (Connection refused (111))

Oh c'mon, that's just standard contract copperplate, doesn't mean anything other than they'd prefer you not to run your own ISP off any of their accounts. With an account of this kind, downloading miniscule amounts of text-only posts, you are, literally, the least of their worries.

For God's sake, we're talking about $10!!! If, in a sudden fit of insanity, Astraweb decide to mobilise their legal department, go elsewhere.

BTW, I'm astonished that you bothered to read the terms of service, what's the point? Isn't your time worth anything?

Yikes! Sorry I violated internet protocol by reading a terms of service page. :o

Question: on a particular newsgroup, are message numbers the same on ALL providers? In other words, without changing the "last message number" The board should pick up again where it left off?

No, numbering depends on the retention of each service: the first first (free but no-posting) service I used had 10,000+ posts for a particular newsgroup whereas the second (paid and posting-allowed) only had 1,000+.

I cheated by changing the "start from" number to 1000, probably causing some overlap but the aim, successfully achieved, was to keep the 10,000 posts but continue to add new posts via the paid, posting-allowed service.

OK, I'm picking up on this. I set up my outlook express to have a look at the same provider and group and I found the header Xref: pubnews.domain.net uk.rec.my.newsgroup:22623 for the message prior to what I want to start with. So all I need to do is insert that number in my Newsgroups Maintenance Last Message Number.

This may be redundant for a lot of you, but I'l bet there are plenty of newbies too. :rolleyes:

Apparently the read only service I was using either took a break, dumped my newsgroup or dumped me. So on to the next one from www.newzbot.com or go with astraweb as recommended.

Hi lierduh,

since your add-on worked like a charme in 3.0.x I upgraded to 3.5 and installed it again. Now the board was running the last weeks - but one thing was left to do. I totaly forgot about that issue - until a whole bunch of original usenet-posters flooded my mailbox with complaints, why the heck we?ld provide a gateway when posts are not sorted in the right way (by reference).
First I was wondering - then I remembered the Advanced Hacking Guide and the problem with the big reply button. The modification-notes are for 3.0.x and can not be used in 3.5 because of the widespreaded code changes.

I believe I asked for an update of that AHG a couple of weeks ago and so far as I can see there was no response to my last post.

lierduh, could you be so kind to release a new version of this AHG asap? I?m in really big trouble with those usenet-people and in the meantime my usenet-provider adviced me to disable this gateway immediatly until it is completly fixed. Looks like the usenet-people had written a couple of complaints..

If you?ld not be able to provide us with a new version atm (I?m aware that life is more then just coding and internet ;) ), would you give permission to others to release the needed changes ? If so I would like to ask the coders in here, wether someone already has a solution for this particular problem or would be willing to give it a try.

Any help appreciated !

There are quite a few things I need do with this hack. I have been quite busy with things. I have not checked how much will be involved with the AHG. Due to the situation you are in, I would advice you to remove the Quick Reply button temporarity from all the forums. You should be able to do this by altering the template. You have my permission if someone is willing to make the changes.

Unfortunately I am not sure what is causing your problem. Probably due to double byte characters. There are quite a few other things I need to address first. So Japanese support won't be something near the top of the list.

You will find the anwers by going through the settings and readme.

Thank you for yor reply.
I think it will be wonderful that I can use your hack.
I will check and try by myself.

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heheheh...ooops :D :D

Wow, great hack - havn't used this for a long time but wanted to try again. Unfortunatly I am having two problems:

a) The first time I ran it I got this mySQL error:

UPDATE nntp_settings
SET value = WHERE varname = 'last_postid';

b) Although threads are being imported into the database, they are not showing up in the actual forum. They do however exist, ie I can enter a direct link to showthread and they appear in a search. The forum however is empty (says Threads 0, posts 0).

Any suggestions?

Ok, upon further investigation:

- The mySQL is real and is causing problems. I assume it is also why the counts in the forums are not being updated because this stops the processing.

- I was wrong about the threads appearing in the forum, i was looking at the wrong one.

There is however an error. Perhaps 3.5.1 made a difference here? I am trying to find the error now.

This code change (an ugly hack, but i was trying to be quick) fixed it: