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.

[michaelgersitz]

I really proboally should look for the answer in this thread since it is proboally listed, but I looked through 10 pages and could not see a similar problem.

The USENET posts post only once, but in my statistics box on teh main page, it doubles the amount of posts by all the posts in my rec.gambling.poker forum.

http://www.goodpokerforums.com/ is my forum.

[James T Brock]

Ok, I have everything installed and only need to insert an NNTP server name. I have my own domain and website, how can I find out if my host offers NNTP (without having to email them and ask)? News.domain.com doesn't work, what else should I try?

[trackpads]

Originally Posted by James T Brock

Ok, I have everything installed and only need to insert an NNTP server name. I have my own domain and website, how can I find out if my host offers NNTP (without having to email them and ask)? News.domain.com doesn't work, what else should I try?

Go to giganews.com I use them and they are pretty good.

-Jason

[trackpads]

Thanks!

Is there a way to prefix the usenet posts so people can tell which ones are local and which ones arent?

If not no biggie,

Thanks again for all the hard work,

-Jason

[James T Brock]

Ok..this is frustrating, everything is working except now I can import posts fine but none of my posts are being submitted to usenet!

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Maybe something in my settings wasn't done right? For organization I have my domain name and I have this for the email; "no-mx.forums.MyDomain.com"

With MyDomain being my sites real domain. is that corrent, or should the syntax be emailAddress@mydomain.com?

[Chadi]

Pardon me for asking but how would I use the Google news?

I want a Christian based newsgroup from Google which I found but I do not know how the addressing works.

[James T Brock]

Originally Posted by chadi

Pardon me for asking but how would I use the Google news?

I want a Christian based newsgroup from Google which I found but I do not know how the addressing works.

When you say "addressing" are you referring to the address of the newsgroup? If you don't mind, post a link to the Google newsgroup and i'll tell you what the address is.

It should be in the format of something like alt.religion.christian or something like that.

[Chadi]

<a href="https://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&group=soc.religion.christian" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...gion.christian</a>

example:
soc.religion.christian.bible-study (would this be it?)

I'm 100% new to this.

[James T Brock]

I think soc.religion.christian is the group you want to set as the address, as soc.religion.christian.bible-study is a different group.

So where it says usenet address use this; soc.religion.christian

[James T Brock]

BTW -- if you're new and you're trying to install this, you need to know that in-order to get the news you'll probably need some kind of NNTP news server. I'm using giganews located at http://giganews.com, it's not free though.