[RELEASE] Usenet Gateway for vB 2.01

Description:

This hack provides a gateway to selected usenet groups. The entire usenet group is mirrored locally. Posts submitted locally to mirrored newsgroups will also be sent out to usenet. A single perl script is executed via cron that collects news and posts any outgoing articles. Incoming messages are parsed against customizable spam filters and threaded correctly before being placed in your forums. By default, no personal information is sent to usenet other than the posters username and whatever you have globally configured as a footer and organization. The option does exist for a user to include a custom email to use for usenet posts. After initial installation (which involves creating some new tables, adding a few columns to existing vB tables, and entering the database connection information to the news script) configuration is completed via the vB control panel.

• See it in action at dBforums.com (usenet forums are at the bottom)
• Download latest version for vB 2.2.4

Current version is 20020323 for vB2.xx

Current feature list:

• correct threading of outgoing posts on usenet
• full control panel integration
• email notification to usenet replies
• emoticon translation into vb icons
• vb code removal or conversion prior to posting to usenet
• hyperlinked urls in messages
• color coded, italicized & indented quotes
• vB style quote to usenet style quote conversions for outgoing posts
• logging of outgoing posts
• support for multiple news servers
• support for seperate footers per forum in outgoing posts
• multi-language (selectable) handling of quoted MIME printable headers (for all those funny foreign characters)
• handling of mailing archive groups
• flexible spam control and replacement variable options for incoming and outgoing messages
• configurable auto-expire option
• option for users to show email address in their outgoing usenet posts (may be different than normal one in profile
• option to enable/disable user signatures on outgoing posts.
• fully compatible with vB moderation functions

Still to be done:

• canceling of messages after they have been sent to usenet via control message in accordance with RFC1036.
• binary attachment support
• email to PM gateway

Screeshots:
Main Options
More Options
Configuration of Newsgroups
Add New Newsgroups
Spam Control
What an imported usenet article looks like in vB

The latest version of this hack will always be in this first post of the thread.

Before asking questions in this thread, please read all the posts in this thread. If your question goes unanswered, it will probably be because the question has already been answered countless times in this thread.

This hack was created for use on my forums and will only be supported as time permits.


Links to required Perl Modules

• News::NNTPClient
• Net::SMTP
• MIME::WordDecoder
• Text::AutoFormat
• Mail::Address
• URI::Find
• DBI
• DBD::MySQL
• Date::Parse
• HTML::Entities

I find it amazing how many people do not READ the instructions.

Installation
------------

1. Install the required perl modules:

http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=NNTPClient
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=libnet
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=MIME-tools
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Text-Autoformat
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=MailTools
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=URI-Find
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=DBI
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Msql-Mysql-modules
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=TimeDate
http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=HTML-Parser

[orca]

Well, Franky, if you ever worked in a Computer Store you wouldn't be amazed. That's your daily business. People usually run to the store b4 reading...

[JCDR]

Hi Franky,

All instructions were read, and the modules were installed by our hosts using the links you have posted.

Should Base64.pm be in the Decoder dir (which it is in) or the MIME dir?

[bitbender]

Thanks for your reply, but could I have it w/o the attitude?

Haven't you ever been 'new' to something? or make a simple mistake?

I read it, I printed each doc section, I backed everything up, and checked the changes i DID make.

Please dont assume EVERYONE understands EVERYTHING that you post here. If you were new in my shop, I would not have spoken to you in that fashion, and I mentor lots of newbies daily.

Some of us come from very diverse backgrounds. You know, the Perl MSI doc indicated it 'installed all necessary components', I was naive enough to believe it. Now I won't.

Thanks for the reply. As I stated before, this is a great piece of work.

Originally posted by JCDR
Should Base64.pm be in the Decoder dir (which it is in) or the MIME dir?

In the Decoder dir mate.

bitbender: sorry, bad day Is it working okay for you now?

[JCDR]

Cheers Franks, thats where it is looks like I'll have to do a fresh install myself this time to see if it resolves the problem.

You could always try installing the files in a local directory, that's what I did, I couldn't be bothered to hassle the hosts to install them, so I just put them in a dir inside my home dir.

[bitbender]

I understand bad days! No problems! I was probably a "bit" harsh, I'd spent too much time with computers on thursday!

I will post my results later after I make sure I have all my "pieces-n-parts" aligned in neat little piles!! As a career programmer, I hate bothering people when I haven't done my piece correctly.

But for now, I must pay homage to the mainframe deities that make my forum hosting services possible(my mainframe job). Hence, I am prevented from doing interesting work for the next 6 or 7 hours....

The VB hacks(related to this function) are all quite functional, and I have done integration testing with the legacy functionality, and all is working fine. Just my omissions causing the newnews.pl script to fail appear to be my only issues in getting this functional.

I am sort of confused, because I cannot tell where W2K installed the Perl source base. It was 37meg, so you'd think a guy could find a trail somewhere..but it was late, and the toothpicks hiolding my eyelids up were becoming quite painful.....I'll probably find it straightaway later today!!

cheers!

[fastforward]

bitbender,

James Cridland posted this a while ago giving instructions for win32 users. It might be helpful.

1. [Installing the modules]
WIN32/ActivePerl: To install these, type "PPM" into a command box. Then, type:
install News-NNTPClient
install NetServer-SMTP
install DBD-Mysql
install Text-Autoformat
install TimeDate
install MIME-tools
install URI-Find

Remember to set the iswin32 variable to 1 in newnews.pl before running it.

[bitbender]

Bless you FastForward!! And say hey to my Dad, he lives in Forrest City, N. C!! Don't know how close you are to that place, but it's nice there!

Hey, was the above information in the 1st thread about this hack? I have been following this thread since I saw the big red banner in the first one that directed me to this thread! No matter, really, I just wanted to make sure I was reading all the pertinent and neccessary data!

THANK YOU for responding...I've been reading all about perl for several hours now, and had just about decided to go and become a Tibetian monk, and sit on a mountain in the himalaya's!

Whew!~ I was afraid I'd be making packages until the cows came home....Can't wait to get back to the forum center to try it !!

Thanki, thanki, thanki, thanki....(did you ever watch Gomer Pyle??)

Update:

FastF, totally AWSOME results from your post, I mean inspiring!!

Working fine now! Tanks again!