NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[Robert Basil]

I've got the hack installed (It's working GREAT thanks!)

The only thing I cannot figure out is how to pull a second newsgroup feed into different forum.

Any hints?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sportbikeworld
I've got the hack installed (It's working GREAT thanks!)

The only thing I cannot figure out is how to pull a second newsgroup feed into different forum.

Any hints?

Add another row in your nntp_groups table with the appropriate settings.

[Robert Basil]

Gilby,

Thanks for all of your help. We are now pulling in 4 newsgroups every 10 minutes. (We have a very busy forum)

By the way, for a newsgroup feed I highly reccomend http://www.newsranger.com Can't be beat for only $4.95 a month.

[v0nreagan]

Hey Gilby

Suggestion for quick mod:

if you use old thread.isusenetpost trick admins can exclude at will (easy mod in search.php) usenet posts from appearing in "View new posts" (some users may prefer not to see 1000s of messages from usenet groups in there).

[Robert Basil]

Originally posted by v0nreagan
Hey Gilby

Suggestion for quick mod:

if you use old thread.isusenetpost trick admins can exclude at will (easy mod in search.php) usenet posts from appearing in "View new posts" (some users may prefer not to see 1000s of messages from usenet groups in there).

This would be a good addition.

[The Realist]

Dont know if its my end or what, but when I run this:

http://www.skytronic-forums.com/forum/gateway.php

I get this (screen shot)

Anyone now what the problem?

[Sanjiyan]

Quick question gilby as I havent seen you on MSN for ages, does this work with 2.2.3b ?

Thanks

Oh BTW, how do I get the gateway.php to give me the nntp code feed back like it used to?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by The Realist
Anyone now what the problem?

For starters, you're using IE. IE thinks it's smart and does what it wants to do, instead of what the headers tell it to do. Anyways, I would guess you don't have your mime types set up correctly to display the text in the browser instead of elsewhere. So try fiddling around with the settings in IE.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
Quick question gilby as I havent seen you on MSN for ages, does this work with 2.2.3b ?

I would assume it does work, but i have not tried it yet. I don't think the database changed much in the new version.

Originally posted by Sanjiyan

Oh BTW, how do I get the gateway.php to give me the nntp code feed back like it used to?

Put an echo in front of all the lines that start with $request and it'll print it out.

[Picolet]

"
Most ISPs will not allow you to access the server from outside the network of the ISP. They only allow local users to use their news server. You may be able to use it if you put in your username and password that you use with that ISP."

So is there a way to login using your username and password to your ISP news server?

How do you include username and password I do not se anywhere in the settings to set those......