[fastforward]

The SMTP server won't affect things being sent to usenet. There are several things that may prevent it showing up on usenet:

For anyone having problems with newnews.pl, I've attached the one I am currently using at my site. It's been running against a dnews server without problems for several months.

1. An invalid email address. As far as I know, the NNTP server just requires an email that 'looks' like a valid email. However, there may be servers that require a working address.
2. You don't have posting rights on the server
3. The group doesn't exist on the server you are posting to.

There are other reasons why your post may not appear in the correct thread on usenet, but for it not to show up at all, it's usually one of the above reasons.

I'm currently re-writing the entire hack in php. There are major changes to the way it works:

• It will be specifically for vB 2.2.1 and php version 4.06 and above.
• I have written my own nntp class that can be used in other scripts. It's virtually a port of the perl one with a few extras.
• The news-pulling script will still be ran using a cron so you will need the php executable on your server. It may be possible to run it via the web, but no guarantees initially.
• There will be an option to retrieve only headers. These will be searchable as a normal post. When somebody clicks on the post, the script will download the bodies of all messages in that thread and display it as a normal post and thread. This option is best suited for people running the news server on their own servers where they can control how long a post is kept. This may be added after the initial release depending on time.
• The posting to usenet will be handled immediately by the 'newthread.php' and 'newreply.php'. The newnews.php will send any posts that may failed the above step, or were since moderated.
• The table structures have changed completely. The external usenet tables will be gone. Additional fields in the vB tables will handle everything. This reduces the volume of data and minimizes the chance of missing usenet posts.

There will be no upgrade path from previous perl versions.