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.

[lange]

I am willing to pay for a NNTP news server. What news server can I use ? Anybody with Usenet.com or Newsfeeds.com ? Or it doesn't matter ? Here is their answer (usenet, newsfeeds):

"You can access the newsgroups through the web to news gateway, but I am not familiar with access through Vbulletin NNTP Gateway. You can give it a try, but as I said I am not familiar with it."

"Hello, You can gain access via web to news gateway. I do not know what vbulletin is. Thank you, Sales"

[trackpads]

I use giganews.com Pretty good.

-Jason

[wflynn]

Probem (1) Everytime I run the gateway it keeps reposting the same messages that already posted to usenet. They are below:

Gateway version 2.2.1 1 group(s) gatewayed.

Connecting to server, server says: 200 News.GigaNews.Com

Server responded after user name: 381 more authentication required

Server responded after password: 281 News.GigaNews.Com

Info for rec.gambling.poker at news.giganews.com:
211 379884 554640 934523 rec.gambling.poker

Posting Message 'Sorry about duplicate posts' from pokerpartys. Result: 340 send article240 post accepted.
Posting Message 'Re: PartyPoker: Play money tables are gone.' from Tommy21. Result: 340 send article240 post accepted.
Posting Message 'Re: Lost my whole buy in, need some analysis' from pokeranch.com. Result: 340 send article240 post accepted.
Posting Message 'Re: Sorry about duplicate posts' from pokerpartys. Result: 340 send article240 post accepted.
Getting message number 567500:
'Define "Tough"' from Linda K Sherman. New thread.
Getting message number 567501:
'Re: hold em: missed bets?' from Linda K Sherman. Thread found by References.
Getting message number 567503:

Problem (2) - I used the prune option several times for my forums but my sql database size stays the same - isnt that suppose to be pruned also?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by wflynn

Probem (1) Everytime I run the gateway it keeps reposting the same messages that already posted to usenet. They are below:
Problem (2) - I used the prune option several times for my forums but my sql database size stays the same - isnt that suppose to be pruned also?

According to this post:

http://groups.google.com.au/groups?h...okerpartys.com

You modified the script at some stage. You could have stuffed it up. I suggest you to put back the original script before too many abuse emails arrive.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by lange

I am willing to pay for a NNTP news server. What news server can I use ? Anybody with Usenet.com or Newsfeeds.com ? Or it doesn't matter ? Here is their answer (usenet, newsfeeds):

"You can access the newsgroups through the web to news gateway, but I am not familiar with access through Vbulletin NNTP Gateway. You can give it a try, but as I said I am not familiar with it."

"Hello, You can gain access via web to news gateway. I do not know what vbulletin is. Thank you, Sales"

The question need to be asked is: can the web server access the news server? It is perhaps easier to use the news server that your web hosting company might have. Failing that, you just need to make sure the web server can access the news server on port 119 using tcp protocol. In a nutshell, the web server which runs this script will act as a news reader, it must be able to read news via port 119 using tcp protocol. You might need to check this with your web host company in case they run outbound firewall on the web server. Some commercial news contents providers let you access news (nntp) through other common ports (eg. port 80) to get around.

[trackpads]

Lierduh,

This has probably been asked but what is the Prefix field for in the newsgroup settings? Will this add text before the title when it is imported?

Thanks again for the great work,

-Jason

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by trackpads

Lierduh,

This has probably been asked but what is the Prefix field for in the newsgroup settings? Will this add text before the title when it is imported?

Thanks again for the great work,

-Jason

Prefix is now used for filtering mailing lists. With a single email account subscribed to multiple mailing lists, one group will only import those emails with defined "Prefix" in the subject. eg.

Set:
newbie

as prefix for forum 1.

Set:
develope

as prefix for forum 2.

forum 1 will only import the emails with [newbie] in the subject (newbie as well)

forum 2 will ignore those and only take care of emails with [develope]/develope in the subject.

[wflynn]

Ok I deleted the 2 databases that get created and reinstalled the files again and you were right it now only posts one message. Everything seems to be working great except for my sql database. I pruned even deleted my entive newsgroup forum but the size of my sql database doesnt get smaller? Is this normal? If it is normal how can I safely prune the sql database to throw away all the old garbage?

I appreciate all your help and must applaud you on this great script! :squareeyed:

[jcrash]

Ugg.

Ok, I got everything working.

It was all working fine...cron scheduled hourly and it would run great.

Then, all of a sudden, it just doesn't download (import) any new messages anymore.

So, I posted a message in my forum and ran it manually - that message was exported, but nothing was imported.

So, I check the last post ID variable and found it to be 194025. I set it down to 193000 and reran the gateway (with debug =1). Nothing was imported, however, the last post ID was RESET to 194025.

All I get now is this:

Gateway version 2.2.1 1 group(s) gatewayed.

Connecting to server, server says: 200 216.128.74.129

Server responded after user name: 381 Helo adx785 password required

Server responded after password: 281 Authorization accepted

Info for rec.gambling.poker at news.athenanews.com:
211 45712 653980 704305 rec.gambling.poker selected

Well, I got it working. I had set the Post ID and not the message ID.

The message ID is in the Groups page and the post is in the settings page.

Message is for the usenet number and postid is for the internal (max vbulletin forum post) number.

There must be some messages that cause this script to die. Once I bumped the message number up again, it worked.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by wflynn

Ok I deleted the 2 databases that get created and reinstalled the files again and you were right it now only posts one message. Everything seems to be working great except for my sql database. I pruned even deleted my entive newsgroup forum but the size of my sql database doesnt get smaller? Is this normal? If it is normal how can I safely prune the sql database to throw away all the old garbage?

I appreciate all your help and must applaud you on this great script! :squareeyed:

Not sure what size you are referring to. The raw mysql file size? or the mysqldump file size?

MyISAM tables keep the space after deletion. New records will be inserted into the empty spaces. You might like to search Google for
optimize myisam table
and/or
phpmyadmin overhead optimize