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).

[recumbent615]

This has been coverd somewhere within this very long thread. But here it is in short!

In the Function sendnews

find:

PHP Code:

$get_userinfo=$DB_site->query("SELECT signature,usertitle,customtitle FROM user WHERE userid=$newthread[userid] LIMIT 1"); 


and repalce it with:

PHP Code:

$get_userinfo=$DB_site->query("SELECT signature,usertitle,customtitle,email FROM user WHERE userid=$newthread[userid] LIMIT 1"); 


find:

PHP Code:

$signature .= $newthread[username]; 


and below it put:

PHP Code:

$my_email = $userinfo[email]; 


Then find ( around line 643 )

PHP Code:

    // post it
    if ($grouptype=='news'){
        $response = $news->post($cat . unhtmlspecialchars($newthread[title]),$group[newsgroup], "$newthread[username] <$msgid>", $message,"Date: ".date("D, j M Y H:i:s O",$newthread[dateline])."\r\nMessage-ID: <$msgid>\r\nOrganization: $settings[organization]\r\nUser-Agent: $settings[useragent]\r\nX-Newsreader: $settings[useragent]\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]$ref"); 


and replace it with:

PHP Code:

    // post it
    if ($grouptype=='news'){
        $response = $news->post($cat . unhtmlspecialchars($newthread[title]),$group[newsgroup], "$newthread[username] <$my_email>", $message,"Date: ".date("D, j M Y H:i:s O",$newthread[dateline])."\r\nMessage-ID: <$msgid>\r\nOrganization: $settings[organization]\r\nUser-Agent: $settings[useragent]\r\nX-Newsreader: $settings[useragent]\r\nX-Originating-IP: $newthread[ipaddress]$ref"); 


That will do it I believe.

Kevin

[stroke25]

thanks for the reply but i dont think thats what im looking for..That would use the email they registered with i believe..Its doesnt seem to work with VB3 Gateway either.

I just want to remove the random numbers/letters in the email.

KGB.11h4mb@pokerhelper.com KGB.11g8ob@pokerhelper.com StopTheKicking.127uvy@pokerhelper.com

I would like it to be username@pokerhelper.com

[recumbent615]

Sorry,

I'm not using VB3 on my production boards, I dnd't relize that that is what you were using. Are you just trying to use a single email address for all posts? Or are you are you trying to just append the username to the @pokerhelper.com as if it were an emal address. Thus not exposing your users email address but not making it look like a made up address?

Kevin

[stroke25]

it already puts the user name there.It wouldnt be a real addy.Just need to figure out how to remove the numbers/letters.

KGB.11g8ob@pokerhelper.com KGB is the user name for this one.It puts the period also.

[jcrash]

Ok, Im pretty new to VBForums administration, and Im having a hard time figuring out the instructions:

3. Go into your database and modify the settings in the nntp_settings table. Descriptions are available in there, but currently it's not integrated with the vB admin control panel.

4. Go in and set up your newsgroups in the nntp_groups table.

What does that mean?

[jcrash]

Nevermind...GOT IT! Jammin!

[Ogmuk]

Great work on this hack guys! It worked on the first attempt although it does want to download a text file here too. Is there an easy way to stop this behaviour with IE6?

2 other questions:
The imported content isn't searchable yet, is it?
I haven't tried to actually create a post in the newgroup yet so I have no idea if this feature is already in, but is it possible to add a little signature to posts from my board? for example, "this message has been posted through www.mysite.com"?

Edit: another question about a little detail I noticed. I see that the amount of thread views by default equals the amount of posts in one thread. Is there an easy way to put these on 0 by default?

Sorry if any of these questions have been asked, it's a rather long thread

[leeherron]

I've been attempting to find a post that may be a solution to a problem that we are experiencing.

It seems that posts from a specific thread in the newsgroup can change their subject and still be threaded correctly, but when they are imported to the forum this is lost and replies to same thread with new subject are exported as new threads for those that are using news reader clients.

Receiving some complaints about this and wondered if there was a fix?

[jcrash]

Hmm...I thought I had everything working right, but I seem to have a problem, my posts are not being inserted into the USENET forum.

http://www.pokerplayerforums.com/

Any Ideas?

I can post to usenet via my newsclient, but the post I placed in the discussion forum never got uploaded.

[jcrash]

I think it has to do with this, maybe:
Email address domain email timelimit.yourserver.com
This domain is used for the msgid of the outgoing post and also for the email address sent to the newsgroups. In the future, I plan to impliment a time limited email address system so replys can go from email to PM.

I have not set that item, what should it be set too and could it be the reason my messages are not getting posted?