NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V3.5.0Alpha 1 (21 Jul 2005)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack was originally coded by Gilby for vB2. I modified the hack to work with vB3 and have been maintaining and improving the hack. I have now done the modification for this to work with vB3.5.

The very original hack by Gilby can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15

The vB3 version can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152

Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files.
No need to manually run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

It is not a must to click "INSTALL" for this hack if you use it, I do try better answering the questions from people who do.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the second post within this thread first. It may be surprising, but it is possible your question is answered in the adminCP NNTP settings.

Please always provide more details about your problem. Examples and debug messages will certainly help. Well, if you don't even try to have some effort to compose your question, the answer you get may also not include much effort.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 21 2005 (release version 3.5.0 Alpha 1)

AdminCP xml file is written by Kadence.

• Ported to work with vB3.5.
• Existing bug fixes.
• Debug message can be sent by email or logged in vB Tast Scheduler.
• Known problem: image attachment thumb nail creation still needs work.
• Needs to be done: Documentation.

Quick installation instruction:
1) Upload files to their correct directory
2) Enter AdminCP, click on NNTP Settings once to install/upgrade. Change settings to your like.
3) Click on NNTP Groups once to install/upgrade.
3a) For new install. Run once
http://www.yourdomain.com/setlastmsg.php

Delete this file afterwards.
If you are upgrading from an older version. There is no need to upload this file. Actually this file should not be there except brand new install.

4)
Manually run in debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

[KW802]

Deepdog009: Thanks for the recap. Unfortuntaley neither of my two issues are addressed. I searched both this thread and the older vB 3.0.x thread and didn't find references to either. Before I started hacking the files I was hoping somebody else came across them.

[jarosciak]

Perfect reply but not to my questions. Eh, it's frustrating when there is no support for such a great script. Only if I could figure out how to get it to work. It seems so close.
joe

[KW802]

Originally Posted by KW802

Re: /includes/functions_image.php

So am I missing something obvious or do we need to use a modified version of functions_image.php from vB 3.0.x with vB 3.5.x in order to get the attachment thumbnails working?

Since attachments are obviously working for some of you guys/gals, could you please tell me where you obtained the functional copy of /includes/functions_image.php from since it is not included in neither the download attached to this thread and it is no longer a standard vB 3.5 file? :disappointed: If it's a case of modifying the old vB 3.0.x version could you let me know what modifications you did to it? Changing the $vboptions to $vb->options is easy enough but I'm not sure what to replace the "global $vboptions" with since "global $vb->options" results in an error.

I can work around the problem with the code/quote/list/whatever threads but am stuck a bit on the functions file.

[jmw]

Does this hack work with vbulletin 3.5.3? Any plans to converting it to plugin?

[AWS]

Originally Posted by jmw

Does this hack work with vbulletin 3.5.3? Any plans to converting it to plugin?

Yes it does.

[jarosciak]

I ended up reworking the whole damn script, using only parts of the one presented here.
Now I have my own version of NNTP gateway and it works like a charm.
I am planning to do also a remote windows version for this program.
Joe

[KW802]

Joe,

I'm also in the midst of rewriting chunks of it to make it work since people here either don't know (or don't care) that some parts of it don't work or simply don't feel like sharing their solutions. Maybe we should talk?

[jarosciak]

Hi KW802,
I've got a whole script written in vb.net as windows app.
Basically what it does, it gives you a list of newsgroups. You can select those you want to sync.
It gets all the messages and feeds them into mysql database.
You can see this script working here: www.n-n-a.com .
It should be very easy to feed it into vb.net forum.
First of all, it's extremely fast. It gives you progress in percentage for each newsgroup and I can pull millions of posts a day.
Do you want to give me some helping hand to get it to work with vbulletin?
Joe

[KW802]

Joe,

Thanks but I would be in need of a PHP based solution. I've already re-written parts of functions_nntp.php file to handle the quote/php/code/list bb codes and will be tackling the functions_image.php file issue next. I figure at this point I'll just hack the PHP files to suit the needs of the site I'm running it on and go from there.

[AWS]

I am having no problems with this script at all. Everything works and has always worked. No problems with bbcode, images, attachments or anything else that others in this thread have problems with. The only time I ever had a problem is when the usenet provider purges one of the groups. This is fixed by running setlastmessage.php after the run dies.