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.

[Marv]

Originally Posted by movielad

Yes, I'd like to be able to pull the email address directly from vBulletin but like the user's name - I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

Hey guys..anyone out there who could help to fix that problem ? :ermm:
Would be appreciated like hell... :nervous:

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Marv

Hey guys..anyone out there who could help to fix that problem ? :ermm:
Would be appreciated like hell... :nervous:

I will include this option in the next version, where each group/list has the option of using the real email. It involves a bit more than just two lines of code although not hard to code.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by flaregun

great hack, worked like a charm in 10 minutes.

I have one questiosn - I've tried to ready through this long thread but can't find it - is there a way to remove the double posting when you send a message to the usenet from your forum, it seems that you show your post on the forum and then when the chron job runs you get back your own post from the usenet in the thread. I think that might confuse some of my users.

thanks in advance.

- R

Go through all the settings in the AdminCP, you will find the answer.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by princeton

I've been having some problems in regards to posting to usenet ... eg. none of my posts are being posted to microsoft newsgroup

Is there something that I may be missing here?

I tried the hack above with no success.
I have send_message set to 1.

thank you

A number of people asking questions without even a debug message, it is virtually impossible to know the reason.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by pgrote

And it ended up working for chopperp1 and for me as well. My question is, what exactly did that do? What is the difference between "\n" and "\r\n" it is something so small and so simple yet solved my problem, so I was just hoping someone (perhaps lierduh) could give me a better idea of what that does or means?

Thanks again for the great help though, and for any further insight you can give!

You are not using the latest version?

Microsoft servers need return carriage + line feed.

[adieball]

Hi

is there a way to exclude all content from the usenet forum from the latest Threds/Posts module in VBadvanced?

Thanks a lot in advance

Andre

[adieball]

Originally Posted by adieball

Hi

is there a way to exclude all content from the usenet forum from the latest Threds/Posts module in VBadvanced?

Forget it ... stupid me ... found it ... typical RTFM

Andre

[The Prince]

Hi all,

I've tried to import all the messages from my news server and I ran into 2 problems. First, The gateway.php?debug=1 thing stopped after 2 hours. It's still not close to havin finished. And now if I run gateway.php as part of a task, it crashes after 5 minutes. It still imports some messages, but since I've still got 100,000 to go, this is going to be quite a nightmare.

Also, the dates of the messages are wrong. They all show the date I imported, instead of the date the messages were posted to the newsgroup.

Can anyone help?

thanks

[Nathan_R]

I'm a little late to the game, but I wanted to thank you for a fantastic hack! I absolutely love this mod.

Best regards,
~~Nathan

[Andy R]

Look at the NNTP Settings and look for the use_post_time setting.

Originally Posted by The Prince

Also, the dates of the messages are wrong. They all show the date I imported, instead of the date the messages were posted to the newsgroup.

Can anyone help?

thanks