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.

[trackpads]

I have a problem and I am sure I am doing something wrong. I have many different mailing lists that go to my list email box. I have been trying to set up the script to take each list and put it into seperate forums. For example-

List A to Forum A
List B to Forum B etc etc

The problem is that no matter what I put in the settings in the newsgroup/mlist settings it still tells me that it sucessfully connected to the pop3 server and retrieved 0 messages. I also went in and looked are there over 60 messages in the inbox of that account.

Thanks again for the help,

-Jason

[BustaCap]

Are you sure that your email client isn't set to delete the messages from the server once it downloads them?

[Marv]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Or unless you meant: you posted a new thread, but the gateway script did not send it to the server, or the server did not accept your new thread post. In any case, you might like to run it manually, capture the screen print out and post here for fault finding purpose.

good morning, lierduh.

sorry - that?s what I should have done with the last post already.

Directly after submitting a new thread to the forums I manually run gateway.php without clicking anywhere else and it says:

Connecting to server, server says: 200 The server welcomes infong64.xxx.de (2xx.xxx.xxx.xxx). Authorization required for reading and posting.

Server responded after user name: 381 PASS required

Server responded after password: 281 Authentication accepted. (UID=238408)

Info for

here.goes.the.newsgroup.name at news.xxx.de:
211 18230 450417 469608 here.goes.the.newsgroup.name

nothing more...that?s it.
If someones posting now a new answer to that post gateway.php works as it should, but is only sending the answer to the newsserver - not the starting post. so it?s a bit confusing for the newsgroup when answers appear but the starting post is missing..
And of course - the post shows up in my forums but gateway.php just doesn?t seem to recognize that.

If it?s not to impudent, lierduh, would you mind to have a look in my forums by yourself? In that case I would send you the logins for .htaccess and the forum via PM. (erm...and before you ask - the problem remains with and without .htaccess enabled )
Guess it?s easier to make a troubleshooting when you?re on the deck and can see the script in action. Just a suggestion.

And by the way.. - I really appreciate the work you?ve done to this hack. Thanks for the given support - must be hard to handle all the little problems that endusers like me are coming up with..:nervous:

[trackpads]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

Are you sure that your email client isn't set to delete the messages from the server once it downloads them?

No, I was using the webmail and I just rechecked, they are still on there.

Thanks again!

-Jason

[Dioxin]

how can i deactivate the attachment import from the script?

does it work, if i comment the following line??:
if ($message['attachments']) {
// process_attachments($date, $postid, $threadid);
}

[BustaCap]

Originally Posted by lierduh

One thing I will add into the next version is: right now, the "From: " email address is the same format as the USENET ones, ie. it does not contain the real email address due to spam prevention. There should be an option for the mailing list forums to send real email address. Some mailing lists only accept subscribed member's posts.

This would be very helpful. At a minimum it would allow at least me to post to the group via the forum.

Originally Posted by lierduh

It is simple to fetch the real email address from the user table, but remember every forum user can post yet unlikely everyone of them have subscribed to the list. You naturally do not want other people to post under your email address to the list.

The way I would have this particular forum setup would be to first deny posting permission to all board members and then give permission only to those members who are already members of the email group I am mirroring. However, I would only do this if the messages look like they are coming from the sender and not from me. For this type of scenario I wouldn't care if my group members posted to the group using my email address as long as the individual posts showed up with their name in the From field.

[trackpads]

For some reason, I set up about 15 groups for 15 different mailing lists but the program imports them into the wrong groups. For example out of the 15 it imported them all into just 2 of the groups.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks again for the help!

-Jason

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by trackpads

For some reason, I set up about 15 groups for 15 different mailing lists but the program imports them into the wrong groups. For example out of the 15 it imported them all into just 2 of the groups.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks again for the help!

-Jason

Are you using the same Pop3 mail box? The current version requires a separate email for each mailing list.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by BustaCap

This would be very helpful. At a minimum it would allow at least me to post to the group via the forum.


The way I would have this particular forum setup would be to first deny posting permission to all board members and then give permission only to those members who are already members of the email group I am mirroring. However, I would only do this if the messages look like they are coming from the sender and not from me. For this type of scenario I wouldn't care if my group members posted to the group using my email address as long as the individual posts showed up with their name in the From field.

There is no clear solution to this. For the lists that need confirmed email address, the individual users need to subscribe to the list. Once they are subscribed, there is very little benefit for them to post through the forum instead of just shoot an email directly to the list. It will also look odd for the rest of the list members to see an "email" sent to the list is actually coming from a forum.

1)Open list, anyone can post to it, even someone is not subscribed. This is the best way to use this script.

2)Closed list. There isn't a good clear solution. Even if you offer your master email address as the posting email address with other user's forum user name. It will not be a good picture to be honest. It is kind of cheating, and unrespectful to the list owner, since the list is a close list. I really need to think again about how to handle this. One thing a forum ower does not want to have is to have the list members hating your forums. The same goes for newsgroups.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Dioxin

how can i deactivate the attachment import from the script?

does it work, if i comment the following line??:
if ($message['attachments']) {
// process_attachments($date, $postid, $threadid);
}

As you have found out. That is correct.