Usenet gateway

THIS THREAD IS CLOSED!
Posts in here will NOT be answered

This hack has undergone many major changes since this thread was started. Consequently, most of the posts have become dated and of little use. To coincide with the latest major release (20010712), a new one has been started.

See this thread for the latest version and discussion

[tamarian]

Originally posted by fastforward

The next release will have a lot of changes that eliminate the need for many of the code edits to vB files. I have already got it working without the need to edit newreply and newthread.php which also means move,copy,split etc will work without problems for any thread.

Can't wait for this!

[Mark Hewitt]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by fastforward
What exactly are you trying to do? What code generated that error? I can still take backups of my database.
[quote]

Just dumping the database and attempting to reupload it to an empty database.

To uninstall the hack, simply upload all your original vB files and drop the columns and table that were added to the vB tables. You can see what these were in the installation scripts.

Thanks, I'll do that.

I did notice one bug which you may or may not be aware of, when I tried to 'update counters' for last posters etc, it threw a database error when it found a usenet post with a / or a ' character.

I can't wait until your next version of this hack

[TechTalk]

If you make a version of this that can run without editing any vbfiles (other than templates) i will bow to you.

I really want to use it but I refuse to edit vb files so when something goes wrong their the only ones to blame

Cant wait for the next version

[fastforward]

This is a first release of the new newnews.pl lite

RC2 came out a bit sooner than expected, so I rushed out an early version.

The good news:

• Only one vB code edit to make! And that is just to add a link for the control panel on the admin/index page.
• Discovered and fixed some more bugs and efficiency issues
• Reduced the number of additional columns added to vB tables

The bad news:

1. You have to work with your templates to hide unnecessary fields such as post counts and location etc. As there are no conditional statements or constructs alowed in templates you will have to create a new styleset and assign it to the usenet forums. This could actually be seen as an advantage.
2. Due to the unexpected release of RC2, this release doesn't provide a way to display a seperate count of usenet posts on the front page. Neither does it allow posts to be hidden from the 'new posts' search. I will try to figure a way to do this without editing the code.
3. Finally, there is no extra permission flag to prevent posts propogating to usenet. This option was a little pointless anyway and could be confusing. If you don't want people posting to usenet then just don't let them post in the usenet forum. Use the vB permissions for it.

More good news: I believe it's possible to have a fully featured usenet gateway with zero code edits to vB files.

Once again, this release was a little rushed. I believe the posting and threading are working correctly, but there may be some other issues I've overlooked so use it with care. It shouldn't really affect any of the vB functionality as we don't touch the code anymore.

One more thing, as mentioned in an earlier post, the 'import user option' is gone.

The package has been updated in the first post of this thread or you can get it here.

If you want to continue using the old one with all the code edits, you can still get it by calling up a directory listing at http://britishexpats.com/download and picking the version you want.

[Mark Hewitt]

Since this doesn't edit vbulletin code anymore is the last thread title "bonus" still included (I assume not).

I use this on my board, is there anywhere I can get instructions as to the code changes needed to implement this on it's own?

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Mark Hewitt
Since this doesn't edit vbulletin code anymore is the last thread title "bonus" still included (I assume not).

I use this on my board, is there anywhere I can get instructions as to the code changes needed to implement this on it's own?

Ah.. I didn't think anyone was using this. I'l get the instructions out later today. It's quite easy and only needs editing in one place (indexpost()) if I remember correctly.

[tamarian]

Fastforward, great job. I just looked up the instructions. This is virtually no code change? If I use phpMyAdmin to enter my news server info and options, or if the settings are entered in newnews.pl, no code changes are necessary?

[fastforward]

Originally posted by tamarian
If I use phpMyAdmin to enter my news server info and options, or if the settings are entered in newnews.pl, no code changes are necessary?

Yep. That's right. I did actually have a go at changing the config page to work standalone which would mean you wouldn't even have to make the one little change left, but it was getting late and I broke it I'll give it another go if I get time before RC3 or vB final is released.

I've figured an easy way to get the usenet post counts and any other config setting you make in the usenet control panel into a global variable that can be referenced in templates. I can just append them to the options template during each news pull. The only drawback to that is if you update the vB config using in between news pulls, the usenet variables will be overwritten until the next news pull set them again. It won't be a problem as long as you remember to resubmit the usenet config straight after you update the vB config. And if you really can't remember to do that, it would only be one little optional code change to functions.php to automate it. I'll try to find another way, but that method is favourite at the moment.

I still haven't figured out a way to eliminate the usenet posts from 'new post' searches without code edits. I'm sure there must be a way though

[Mark Hewitt]

I've tried the new version but all the posts have the date/time of when they were inserted into the database rather than the correct date when they were posted.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Mark Hewitt
I've tried the new version but all the posts have the date/time of when they were inserted into the database rather than the correct date when they were posted.

That is how it's supposed to work. Otherwise, they won't be threaded correctly when local posts are in the same thread as usenet posts.

If you want it the old way then you will have to go back to the old method of editing the vB code in newreply.php, newthread.php, postings.php and functions.php. Which would you prefer?

The time of posting is not very reliable anyway. It's not even the NNTP time. It's based on the users PC from which the post was made. With this method, the post times are actually going to be more consistent. Plus. if you're pulling news 2 or three times an hour, there won't be much discrepency between the original post (except when the original post was wrong).