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.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Marv

Could someone help me with that problem ? I can run the gateway only once a day connecting to 9 newsgroups. That means I receive ~50 posts from the first newsgroup and while they are ported over to the db my Server-IP becomes blocked :ermm:
I guess the script works perfect as it should. I only must connect to a newsserver that seems to accept only 5 request per second. 5 connections to newsgroups are working fine - everything above becomes blocked. I guess that?s because the script doesn?t loop through each ng like the script imports the single posts. Instead it gateways all ng?s with only one request which means multiple connections at one time. (True or false ?)

Is there a way that gateway.php could pause between two ng?s for ? seconds ?

Regards,
Marv.

A quick and dirty way is to add:

sleep (5);

under this line:

while ($group = $DB_site->fetch_array($get_groups)){

Change 5 to other seconds you want. The script queries the server one by one, it does not create more than one connection at a time. It behaves quite like a normal news reader.

[Blackbeard]

When all these post from newsgroup, if a member replies to the post should it post back to newsgroup, iam i ment to do anything more than basic installation, as i have tested reply, didnt get any error but viewed newsgroup and no reply posted.

am i ment to put anything in prefix, username etc to post back etc or do i have to alter any settings in gateway settings??

[Marv]

Originally Posted by lierduh

A quick and dirty way is to add:

sleep (5);

under this line:

while ($group = $DB_site->fetch_array($get_groups)){

Change 5 to other seconds you want.

That does the trick. Thank you, lierduh

Originally Posted by lierduh

The script queries the server one by one, it does not create more than one connection at a time. It behaves quite like a normal news reader.

I see - I tested the gateway this morning with a commercial newsserver and the script worked like a charme (out of the box). It seems the problem was in fact the free newserver I used until now. But modificated with sleep(3); even the free one works fine.

[xb_]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Actually I need the original message headers.

Ok. I have attached one example for now, as i didn't used the client that allowed me to view/save raw messages with ease. I used outlook, while outlook express seems better for the job. When i exported from outlook to outlook express, it didn't export all of the original headers. (which i had to add manualy again) :|

Anyway knowing this, the next example should be easyer.

[Blackbeard]

Originally Posted by Blackbeard

When all these post from newsgroup, if a member replies to the post should it post back to newsgroup, iam i ment to do anything more than basic installation, as i have tested reply, didnt get any error but viewed newsgroup and no reply posted.

am i ment to put anything in prefix, username etc to post back etc or do i have to alter any settings in gateway settings??

any chance someone can help why can i not post back to newsgroups, in settings in the email bit, iam ment to add the email like webmaster@learnall.com or mail.learnall.com which one is it. Or is it something else.

please help i have clicked installed

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by xb_

Ok. I have attached one example for now, as i didn't used the client that allowed me to view/save raw messages with ease. I used outlook, while outlook express seems better for the job. When i exported from outlook to outlook express, it didn't export all of the original headers. (which i had to add manualy again) :|

Anyway knowing this, the next example should be easyer.

There should be no reason for those posts not to be threaded.

Don't tell me you have not turned on "Find Thread by Subject" within AdminCP.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Blackbeard

any chance someone can help why can i not post back to newsgroups, in settings in the email bit, iam ment to add the email like webmaster@learnall.com or mail.learnall.com which one is it. Or is it something else.

please help i have clicked installed

A few things might help other people helping you.

Your current AdminCP setting
Reading Readme file
Post debug info

[xb_]

Originally Posted by lierduh

There should be no reason for those posts not to be threaded.

Don't tell me you have not turned on "Find Thread by Subject" within AdminCP.

hm i didn't indeed :| sorry for the trouble.. and offcourse thanks for the support.
As a sidenote, imho this setting should be enabled automagicly when using mailinglist archive.

[Marv]

Hi lierduh,

are you working an the next release of this hack yet ? if so I would really appreciate if you ( or someone else ) could make this hack producing correct email adresses in the header ( i.e. From: My Name <myemail@domain.com>) .
Many people in the newsgroups which we?re importing are asking for that.

Is there a simple way of including the email-adress from the db to the header information, so that others only have to hit the reply button to drop the author a line?

Regards,
Marv.

[john_rsd]

lierduh

Did you ever consider making the code for the sort by reference/thread a stand alone query that could be run on an existing forum?

Mainly for forums which have a lot of non-threaded entries due to not having correct settings, or where the thread by subject was not used with the original hack.