I hard coded it like this, and now all my posts start with "Re:" even if its a new post... so definately something there about is wrong... I checked and its all original, nothing modded there.

Did it work fine before you made any edits to the hack?

Well its working now... I dunno.... onlu thing I changed that I started posting from main forum, and not from post page itself.

:)

This is a cool hack, but its little over my head right now...
I think I might have some SQL issues...

I am missing some original posts... (I think they might be somewhere in my SQL... even tough I cleaned up the tables, by removing all the posts with isusenetpost =1 ... also cleaned up the index, and rebuilt it too. Is there something else I should have done?

<a href="http://www.latriade.net/newsgroup/showthread.php?threadid=6862" target="_blank">http://www.latriade.net/newsgroup/sh...?threadid=6862</a>

quotes are in blue how i can put quote in white ? (or in font color of the theme )

Heh, I wish that was my problem. When running "prune messages", it completely crashes MySQL.

Quick question, is there a way to prevent soome useres posting not being downloaded.

I have this one user, who keeps postiing the same thing over and over again, and I would like to block his posts being downloaded.

I don't have any filters or replacements set up yet in the script. You may want to just change his permissions to not be able to post to that forum.

(I assuming the problem poster is posting on the forums?)

Stupid question, but in the nntp_settings table, the Email address domain,
do I need to put the domain name there (like mydomain.com), or
do I need to specify a full emailaddress (like us@ourdomain.com)

Domain Name is enough

Mood

Thanks for the extremely fast reply :D

Now to get this thing to post...

Installed this hack and all I am getting when I run the gateway.php file is:

NNTP (Usenet/Newsgroup) Gateway

And thats it.

No newsgroup posts are posted in my forums?

Why........ anyone!

Brian

I am Interested with some filter capability when it comes available...

Also just noticed some of the posts coming from usenet groups have 4 identical replies from same guy.

ie if original post have 3 guys participated, mine shows I have 12 posts 4 each ???

What would cause this? Its happening with posts that have appx 10-20 posts.

NOTE to all having problems connecting with the news server - you need to try another news server. I have tried a few of the free public ones - not all of them work.

This hack DOES WORK. You just need to find the correct news server. I have been using this hack on the day it was released, and it has not stopped working yet. The only time it stops working is when my free news server changes IP addresses - I just need to keep up!

Well done, Gilby, for one of the best hacks for VB!

Also, some of the free news servers allow READING only, NO POSTING (so you can download posts but cannot upload posts). Others allow POSTING only, NO READING (so you can login but no posts get downloaded, while you can upload posts).

Just shop around... ;)

It works great, but I removed it because while trying to delete about 50,000 old posts downloaded, it kept crashing the MySQL server.I do a mass prune, it works for a couple of minutes, then MySQL crashes.

Next time, you should set the initial post numer to a higher value so you don't get so much posts ;)

I wonder about the legality of just connecting to any news-server that happens to allow posting to anyone, or even reading. I haven't found a single site that actually advertises with "hey, you can post all you want though our newsserver".

That's the thing that bugs me about this.

Although this is Off Topic as well: NNTP is about enormous bandwidth & storage strain. If a service is free - who pays for the boxes? Most of the free Usenet is either school financed, underground or newbies wanting to run a server and suddenly noticing that their 80 GB IDE drive has been filled in a few hours.

If you translate the time you spend trying to find a free server to $$ you'd be able to afford any premium service out there. My count works like this: 1.5 beer less per week will pay for my NNTP account for a year :-)

Mood

Not sure if this is entirely off topic :)

But any suggestions are welcome regarding paid services

I've got the hack installed (It's working GREAT thanks!)

The only thing I cannot figure out is how to pull a second newsgroup feed into different forum.

Any hints?

Add another row in your nntp_groups table with the appropriate settings.

Gilby,

Thanks for all of your help. We are now pulling in 4 newsgroups every 10 minutes. (We have a very busy forum)

By the way, for a newsgroup feed I highly reccomend http://www.newsranger.com Can't be beat for only $4.95 a month.

Hey Gilby

Suggestion for quick mod:

if you use old thread.isusenetpost trick admins can exclude at will (easy mod in search.php) usenet posts from appearing in "View new posts" (some users may prefer not to see 1000s of messages from usenet groups in there).

This would be a good addition.

Dont know if its my end or what, but when I run this:

http://www.skytronic-forums.com/forum/gateway.php

I get this (screen shot)

Anyone now what the problem?

Quick question gilby as I havent seen you on MSN for ages, does this work with 2.2.3b ?

Thanks

Oh BTW, how do I get the gateway.php to give me the nntp code feed back like it used to?

For starters, you're using IE. ;) IE thinks it's smart and does what it wants to do, instead of what the headers tell it to do. Anyways, I would guess you don't have your mime types set up correctly to display the text in the browser instead of elsewhere. So try fiddling around with the settings in IE.

I would assume it does work, but i have not tried it yet. I don't think the database changed much in the new version.

Put an echo in front of all the lines that start with $request and it'll print it out.

"
Most ISPs will not allow you to access the server from outside the network of the ISP. They only allow local users to use their news server. You may be able to use it if you put in your username and password that you use with that ISP."

So is there a way to login using your username and password to your ISP news server?

How do you include username and password I do not se anywhere in the settings to set those......

Depending on your ISP, you might be able to use your regular username and password that you use to log in to teh internet. You may need to ask your ISP if there is a way for you to log in to the server from an external site.

In the nntp_groups table, there is a column for the username and one for the password.

I just installed the hack, and everything seems to work except for proper branching of posts when they appear in the newsgroup.

This is what happened: I started a new thread, and then posted a reply. Then I replied to that reply, but instead of continuing the branch, it appeared as a reply to the original post. When it appears this way on the newsgroup, it could make reading the thread difficult.

vB is not a threaded forum software, but apparently in version 3 of vB, this will be supported.

However, in a future version of this hack, I may try to find out which post it is a direct reply to by looking at the quotes in the post.

Fair enough. Until then, I'll use this hack for reading instead of posting. And thanks for the quick reply!

Database error in vBulletin 2.2.2:

Invalid SQL: UPDATE forum SET replycount=replycount+1,threadcount=threadcount+1, lastpost='1014743904',lastpost er='John Andrews' WHERE forumid IN ()
mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax near ')' at line 1

What is causing this?

Thumbs up to you Gilby on an excellent job! I installed it a few days ago and everything is working great...except for a few minor internal issues! I tried the other usenet hack, but it seemed to be way to slow (don't know why). I only retrieve one newsgroup (rec.games.pinball) for my site right now, but the initial 4,200 messages came through in about 2 minutes! Each update (every 4-6 hours) takes less than 20 seconds! My updates are spread out that long because I can't get the crontab working for some reason. No biggie... I'll figure it out!

Here is what I am running:
- vBulletin 2.2.0
- vBPortal 3.0pr7
- Mammothnews.net server

I have been a member of Mammothnews.net for about 2 years now, and for only $9.95/mo, I get EVERYTHING! I was tired of incomplete binary multi-threads (especially when downloading MAME games)!

Anyway, here is a list of things I'd like to see in your upcoming versions (all relate to vBulletin and all were able in other usenet hack):
- As mentioned a few posts above, 'isusenetthread' as a table field would be very helpful so that usenet posts AND threads could not be counted on the forum homepage.
- Ability to not show new usenet posts when 'Get New Posts' is clicked.

Other than that, everyone loves being able to access rec.games.pinball from my site now! It is the only means for some to access the newsgroup at work (on their lunch hour of course :) ). Keep up the great work!

Hey Gilby
Thanks for creating this hack, I have been waiting for this for a long long time.
I tried going to the gateway.php url on my server and I got this error.

Database error in vBulletin 2.2.2:

Invalid SQL: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.attachmentid,post.paget ext,post.showsignature,post.ipaddress,thread.title ,post.threadid,thread.forumid, thread.msgid,thread.prefix FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND (thread.forumid=1)
mysql error: Unknown column 'thread.prefix' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Any idea on what I need to fix.
Thanks everybody

Did you run the SQL? You need to run it for this hack to work as it adds columns to some tables, like the prefix column in the thread table, and it adds new tables.

Thanks for the reply Gilby
I did run them, I had fastforwards hack before so I get this error when I run nntp.sql
SQL-query :

CREATE TABLE nntp_groups (
newsgroup varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
forum varchar(32) NOT NULL default '0',
prefix varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
lastmsg int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
server varchar(64) default NULL,
username varchar(32) default NULL,
password varchar(32) default NULL,
enabled int(11) NOT NULL default '1',
PRIMARY KEY (newsgroup),
KEY forum (forum)
) TYPE=ISAM PACK_KEYS=1

MySQL said:

Table 'nntp_groups' already exists

or this error when I run upgrade.sql

Error
SQL-query :

CREATE TABLE nntp_groups (
newsgroup varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
forum varchar(32) NOT NULL default '0',
prefix varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
lastmsg int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
server varchar(64) default NULL,
username varchar(32) default NULL,
password varchar(32) default NULL,
enabled int(11) NOT NULL default '1',
PRIMARY KEY (newsgroup),
KEY forum (forum)
) TYPE=ISAM PACK_KEYS=1

MySQL said:

Table 'nntp_groups' already exists

Would it be easier to just delete all the old tables and re-run the nntp.sql, I just did not know which ones I need to delete.
Thanks

Delete the nntp_* tables and rerun the upgrade.sql script. I guessing that the tables have duplicates in them since you've run them a few times. If after doing that and it doesn't work, then run the few lines at the bottom of the sql file separately, one line at a time.