For the quote issue .. it might be worth taking a look at the NNTP Gateway hack ..
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=92588
They don't put a quote tag around previous messages, but they do seem to colourise them depending on how many >'s there are per line .. it might be something you could use.
As for the cron issue .. have a look at vBMS ..
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=125890
From what I remember filbert could never get vbcron to work with his hack so setup his own cron job .. not sure if that still relied on page refreshes or not but worth a look perhaps.