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

[Hemanth]

Willing to pay good money for this mod to be updated and optimized for vB 3.7.x & future versions.

If anybody interested please contact me.

[Rik Brown]

Originally Posted by Hemanth

Willing to pay good money for this mod to be updated and optimized for vB 3.7.x & future versions.

If anybody interested please contact me.

Hemanth:

This looks like the best possibility at the moment: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=184344 by Kerry-Anne. I hope that she is working on updating this mod. She always does a first-class job on her mods.

-- Rik

[Rik Brown]

Just thought I'd share this useful mysql query by Wayne Luke that I found on vbulletin.com that finds duplicate posts within each thread. You can then easily delete those dupes.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=285501

If you've ever had 2 instances of the NNTP importer running on the same newsgroups by mistake, you'll really benefit from this. But it works just as well finding dupe posts inadvertently posted by your own vb users or from Usenet users.

The first time I ran it yesterday, I found thousands of dupe messages that have built up over the years connecting to Usenet. Now that they are all cleaned out, I'm going to run it on an regular basis before each build of our sitemaps.

I hope that you find it useful in conjunction with this mod. -- Rik

[cedivad]

Thank you for the link, really usefull!

[LPH2004]

I've had this script working for a long time, changed the php version in December and it stopped. I finally figured out the time out was not set correctly in my.cnf and was able to get things rocking again.

Until today.

Today, the hosting company had to move my site to another box. The linux box the site was on was hacked. No problem. Except there has been nothing but problems with this new box.

I cannot get the script to run in the browser. I can, however, get the script to run at the CL when I ssh to the box. I can run #php /path/to/gateway.php and all is fine.

However, the scheduled task craps out as well as gateway.php?debug=1 in the browser.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to look?

[Simon Lloyd]

Maybe you have to run the setlastmessage.php again?

[LPH2004]

Originally Posted by Simon Lloyd

Maybe you have to run the setlastmessage.php again?

Thank you for the suggestion but the gateway script runs at the CL as root but not in the browser. After changing some of the messages in nntp.php file, I see fsockopen fails in the browser but works at the CL. However, I am unsure how to fix the permissions to get this to work.

Update: The above statement is probably not accurate. The fsockopen fails for the nntp.php script but works for a little test script I wrote:

http://technologyquestions.com/technology/testfp.php

Update: After 5 days of the hosting company insisting something was wrong the script - they found the problem. SELinux was blocking the port. The script now operates as it did for years

[Simon Lloyd]

Glad you got your's going!, i still get db errors since the php upgrade and can't seem to get anyone to sort it!

[Rik Brown]

Has anyone made modifications to the Gateway so that embedded YouTube videos (specifically the AME Media Embedding mod code) can be converted to normal URLs to export on Usenet?

I assume it just requires simple additions to the array in the includes/functions_nntp.php file. But I'm not so sure how to accomplish it?

If anyone has done so, could you please share the code?

Thanks. -- Rik

[dicot]

Exactly what does the ISP need to do to get rid of the UTF-8 garbage in the user name? Edit the php.ini, install something? They say i need to edit my php file... when others asked y'all sat they need to do something.