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).

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by lierduh

This error means the script tries to set cookie, but the header has already been sent.

You might like to try:

lynx -source "http://forum.com/vb3/gateway.php?log=cron"

in your cron file.

Thanks, lierduh - we'll see if it works.

Even more bizarre, the script works fine if I run it manually in *any* browser - including lynx. It also works as a vBulletin cron job.

[allan grossman]

Replying to my own post...

Nope - that didn't work. I'm still getting the 'headers already sent' thingie. The weird thing is it used to work fine - but I'm experiencing some vB3 weirdness. Inline attachments and thumbnails quit working about the same time. I've been working with vB on this. For now, running the thing as a vB3 cron job appears to be working but wouldn't be my first choice

[limey]

I'm getting double posts..Its one of the reasons I scratched it and started over in the first place--not doing that again though.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Has this been adapted to work with the vb# prefix codes yet ?

Originally Posted by Bro_Joey_Gowdy

Im getting several errors mainly concerning the vBprefix code:: Could someone please make this an official release within the vB3 Mod. forums ?
Database error in vBulletin 3.0.0 Release Candidate 3:
Invalid SQL: SELECT varname,value FROM nntp_settings
mysql error: Table 'a51834.nntp_settings' doesn't exist
mysql error number: 1146
Date: Thursday 22nd of January 2004 06:32:40 PM
Script: http://www.joeygowdy.com/forum/gateway.php
Referer:
Username: Bro_Joey_Gowdy
IP Address:

[allan grossman]

Joey, that's not vBprefix, that error's telling you the 'nntp_settings' table isn't present in your database - and it's kinda critical.

I'm at the office and my server's at home, but I believe the gateway requires three tables added to your forum database - and at least one of them doesn't exist.

Hope this helps -

[allan grossman]

lierduh, I know your vb3 version on page 44 is a work in progress, but I've identitied a couple problems with the 'quote' function that I have no idea how to fix since all I do is install this stuff, not write it

First, the whole 'Originally posted by' line doesn't work and I don't know why. I know you wanted to change the text to "xxx wrote:" but that doesn't work either.

The routine does put *two* > characters at the head of the quote with a random character between them (I've seen 'e' and an apostrophe) but the quoted person's name is missing from the post.

I'm gonna play with this some tomorrow but I think I'm way out of my league.

One more question - I use "{1} said..." instead of the default. Can you help me a little if you have time?

[stroke25]

Heres the error im getting when running gateway.php (using gateway file from pg.44)

---------------------------------------------------------
1 group(s) gatewayed. Logging in to news.XXXXXXXXXXX.com, group control.XXXXxXX

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.0 Release Candidate 2:

Invalid SQL: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.pagetext,post.showsignature,post.ipaddress, thread.pollid,thread.title,post.threadid,post.atta ch,thread.forumid FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND post.dateline=thread.dateline AND post.userid=thread.postuserid AND (thread.forumid=36)
mysql error: Unknown column 'post.isusenetpost' in 'where clause'

mysql error number: 1054

----------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Thanks for the reply i did miss a step in nntp.sql

Everything seems to be working good now.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by stroke25

Heres the error im getting when running gateway.php (using gateway file from pg.44)

mysql error: Unknown column 'post.isusenetpost' in 'where clause'

mysql error number: 1054

----------------------------------------------------------

This means you do not have the "isusenetpost" field in your "post" table. You might like to make sure the nntp.sql (? comes with the original file) is run.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

lierduh, I know your vb3 version on page 44 is a work in progress, but I've identitied a couple problems with the 'quote' function that I have no idea how to fix since all I do is install this stuff, not write it

One more question - I use "{1} said..." instead of the default. Can you help me a little if you have time?

I will have a look.

[limey]

FYI this has been working flawless on RC2 afraid to upgrade to RC3