NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V2.3.2 (31 Oct 2004)

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 is basically a hacked vB2 NNTP gateway written by Gilby to work with vB3. The original hack can be found here:

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


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.
• Supports TABLE_PREFIX.
• 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

• AdminCP interfaces. (completed)
• Installation/upgrade script. (completed, coded into AdminCP)
• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files if you use two bookmarks
You need to edit one vB php file to insert two lines of code if you want direct click links within AdminCP.
No need to 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.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the third post within this thread first.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 31 2004 (release version 2.2.0)

• Provided option of not importing attachments
• Provided option of pause between messages
• Provided option of not sending messages to USENET
• Provided mechanism to skip importing a message if it was crashed on it
• Provided "Default Footer" option
• Provided strip_footer function for mailing lists
  (written originally by KevinM)
• Provided Killfile functions with Header/Body/AND/OR settings
• Provided ability to thread messages by subject for mailing lists
• Provided ability to use a single POP3 account for different mailing lists
  (use prefix)
• Merged KevinM's attachment routine, save thumbnail to hard drive
  as vB3.0.3
• Official support to have the script run by Scheduled Tasks
• Many bug fixes

Please note, when you manually run the script, you must turn on the debug mode. Otherwise nothing will be displayed on the screen.

To run as debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

25 Oct 2004

• Provided the option of sending posts using the real email address
• Provided the option of sending posts using a fixed email address for
  each group.
• Posts are now held back if they are in the moderating queue
• Scheduled task log is now working
• Provided the option of sending the debug messages to the vB3 cron log
• Bug fixes

31 Oct 2004

Fixed bugs running the gateway by the vB3 Scheduled Tasks

1 March 2004

Uploaded the new zip file. It contains one or two bug fixes.

[KevinM]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

One issue that I'm still having is that the vast majority of the mailing list posts are not being threaded and are showing up as individual posts.

Yes, this has been mentioned before. I remember from the early days of this hack when I used it to mirror a yahoo group, I spent half my time manually merging threads. It drove me mad.

As far as I can tell, the script doesn't rely on matching thread titles at all, but by references in the headers (which works great for usenet, which is built on this standard).

If there isn't a reference or a match then a new thread is started. I should think it is possible to do a secondary check against a thread title before starting a new thread.

I will have a look and see how difficult this would be to implement. I am no expert at php - I just look at other peoples scripts and figure it out (sometimes!).

[BustaCap]

That would be great, let me know how you make out.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

Finally, two suggestions:

1. For mailing lists, all emails will have a common word or phrase in the subject. For example, the subject of all messages for the "New DVD Releases" mailing list would look something like:

[NewDVD] Spider Man deluxe edition
RE: [NewDVD] Spider Man deluxe edition
etc...

It would be great if you could add a setting in the gateway setup that would allow the user to specify the subject phrase (eg, [NewDVD]) and then strip that from the subject text so that it doensn't show up in the title of every post. Also, even more importantly, have a check box that would allow us to only import message that has the subject phrase. This would allow us to filter out messages that are not actually mailing list messages.

2. Every mailing list message that I get has the same text in the footer. It would be great if there was a setting somehwere where I could specify this footer text (its over 13 lines!) and have it stripped before importing the message.

Thanks, this hack is really useful for me!

1. Doesn't mailing lists add prefix to any messages posted to it? The two type of lists I have admined do. they are sympa and mailman.

2. I consider it rude to strip the footers. The lists attach them for a purpose, either advertising or rules. They should be presented as they are received in an email mail box. If the list adds 13 lines of footer to the messages, perhaps the subscribers can complain to the list owner to have it shrinked down.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

I can't figure out why some (very few) posts are threaded but others with the same subject are not. Admittedly, I know zero about coding, but shouldn't it be pretty straightforward to determine which replies should be threaded based on the subject title? I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the "Use Post Time" setting. The default is set to use the time stamp when the messages are imported, which means that all of the posts at the time of import have the same time stamp. I changed it to use the original post time, thinking that posts with the same title and same timestamp might somehow be throwing off the threading. I'll test this and see how it works. Any idea though why the posts are threading correctly?

The threading works by checking references in the headers. All the email clients I have used set this field in the header correctly. Although I have not checked, but I am pretty sure that is the requirement set out by the RFC for the email clients. Could you please post the headers of the messages that are not threaded correctly?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

Lierduh, are you still supporting this hack? I haven't seen you comment in over a week so I was just wondering.

I was just out of town for a week.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by scottct1

I am using the old version of gateway.php (The one that worked with the Beta versions of VB3 where you had to edit the database by hand to add newsgroups)

I am thinking of upgrading to this version.

Do I need to do anything to make this version work, such as

If anyone is using the (beta) versioin from the early days. There is nothing needs to be done. The AdminCP will do the rest for you when you fire them up the first time.

The AdminCP interfaces are also: Installation script, upgrade script. It is designed in a way not to slow down the normal operation when the version is already up to date.

[BustaCap]

Originally Posted by lierduh

1. Doesn't mailing lists add prefix to any messages posted to it? The two type of lists I have admined do. they are sympa and mailman.

2. I consider it rude to strip the footers. The lists attach them for a purpose, either advertising or rules. They should be presented as they are received in an email mail box. If the list adds 13 lines of footer to the messages, perhaps the subscribers can complain to the list owner to have it shrinked down.

1. I'm not sure. I'll post the header though.

2. At the moment I am archiving the group just for my own purposes and the forum is hidden to everyone but myself. If I ever made it public I would likely add the footers back in.

Here are four messages (from a Yahoo group) with the exact same subject line that were not threaded:

To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Message-ID: <ca0tlh+r84f@eGroups.com>
In-Reply-To: <ca0scn+85e3@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 66.218.66.74
From: "User 1" <U1@site.com>
X-Originating-IP: XXX.XX.XX.X
X-Yahoo-Profile: User 1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com; contact GAdetection-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:GAdetection-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 05:15:29 -0000
Subject: [GAdetection] Re:Infallible detectives
Reply-To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Message-ID: <ca0tp9+vv2t@eGroups.com>
In-Reply-To: <20040607005707.68431.qmail@web51706.mail.yahoo.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 66.218.66.68
From: "User 2" <U2@web.net>
X-Originating-IP: XXX.XX.XX.X
X-Yahoo-Profile: User 2
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com; contact GAdetection-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:GAdetection-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 05:17:29 -0000
Subject: [GAdetection] Re: Infallible detectives
Reply-To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 64.12.137.5
From: User3@aol.com
X-Yahoo-Profile: User3
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com; contact GAdetection-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:GAdetection-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 18:11:59 EDT
Subject: [GAdetection] Re:Infallible detectives
Reply-To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Message-ID: <ca056l+dh9f@eGroups.com>
In-Reply-To: <1d6.23335dec.2df4f0af@aol.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 66.218.66.105
From: "User4" <U4@site.fr>
X-Originating-IP: xxx.xx.xx.x
X-Yahoo-Profile: User4
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com; contact GAdetection-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:GAdetection-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:17:57 -0000
Subject: [GAdetection] Re:Infallible detectives
Reply-To: GAdetection@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I notice the 3rd one didn't even have a message ID or a "In reply to". That's not a typo, I wonder if it has something to do with his AOL client. None of the Message-ID's or In-Reply-To match up.... I guess that is the problem :surprised:
If that's true, would it be possible to thread the posts based on the subject title? Then maybe the post order within the thread could be determined by post time.

Welcome back

[KevinM]

I have something on my test system on the threading-by-subject which is about 70% complete. It turned out to be easier than I thought.

The way it is working out:

1. It check against references (as it always has - no change here).
2. If there is no reference match, it checks if "Re: " appears in the subject title
3. If it does, it checks for a match by subject title (with the "Re: " removed) and forum and inserts the post.
4. If not, it creates a new thread (back to the existing script)

If Lierduh finds a way by using the references alone, then that will be a far more efficient way of threading as this will add two more queries to the script.

[BustaCap]

How does it handle multiple "Re:" in the subject?

[KevinM]

Good question. I've got it working fine on my test system now, and it works with multiple "Re: " in the subject.

I will do a final test tomorrow on a clean 'gateway' script, write some instructions and then you can be do some testing on a real mailing list if that's ok. :nervous: