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.

[lierduh]

Have you ruled out the server only lets you access one group at a time?

Originally Posted by infiniterb

lierduh,

I'm still having my issue that I posted above. I can get posts to show up on my forums, and I can successfully post. I am using the Scheduled Tasks in vb and it works fine. However, all is working fine for only the first forum in the list. I'm currently using the following groups in this order:

24hoursupport.helpdesk
alt.privacy.spyware
microsoft.public.security
microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.browser
microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin

All groups are enabled, and are using a personal newshosting.com account I have set up with posting access. When gateway.php runs via the scheduled tasks, it hits the first group on the list, and updates it with the new posts from the NG. I have gateway.php set to hit the groups listed above every 15 min (I've played with different times, and nothing seems to work).

Any idea why only the first group in my list will update? I've even set the first group to disabled, which allows the 2nd group to update just fine and allow posting, however the 3rd group on down are not updated. It'd be a real pain to have to enable/disable groups manually.

[infiniterb]

I have not. I was wondering if anyone else had similar issues, or if this were something you had come across.

[recumbent615]

I have recently installed this mod on my upgraded VB V3.0.6 . I had been using the same mod on my old VB 2.x install. I use it as a Mailing list gateway and it is much improved over the older VB2 version.

I have noticed that it does not seem to do the right thing when it reads a message that is a reply ( to the mailing list ) to an exsisting thread that does not contain a References header. I had read in some posts that others had seen this issue last year, and I believe that KevinM had a patch. My question is, did that not work? is that why it was not incorproated into the latest released version?

I just did not want to apply a mod to the mod if it does not work?

Thanks for any feed back on this issue.

Kevin B

[ART]

Originally Posted by lierduh

You should be able to upgrade from v2 version automatically by opening up the two control panel pages once.

No the posts already exported will not be exported again.

Thanks lierduh, in the meantime I did the update - and all went smoothly

and thanks for the work - the new gateway runs perfect for me!

[recumbent615]

Originally Posted by recumbent615

I have recently installed this mod on my upgraded VB V3.0.6 . I had been using the same mod on my old VB 2.x install. I use it as a Mailing list gateway and it is much improved over the older VB2 version.

I have noticed that it does not seem to do the right thing when it reads a message that is a reply ( to the mailing list ) to an exsisting thread that does not contain a References header. I had read in some posts that others had seen this issue last year, and I believe that KevinM had a patch. My question is, did that not work? is that why it was not incorproated into the latest released version?

I just did not want to apply a mod to the mod if it does not work?

Thanks for any feed back on this issue.

Kevin B

Here is an example of the problem: See the attached Image Issue.gif

and the headers from the Second line of that Image that did not get threaded correctly

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Note that the Subject is RE: but there is not References Tag in the header. I thought that this hack would first look for the Reference line in the header and if it could not fine one it would then try to match on Subject ( after removing the RE: )

Is it possible that there is a setting that I have missed or need to add to get this MOD to thread both ways ?

Thanks

Kevin

[recumbent615]

I beliieve that I found the answer to my Question, and Yes I was Missing a setting. Thread_by_subject was set to "0", I was under the impression that setting that would forego the use of the References header information. After reading the code some I see that this is not the case, I turned on this switch and eveything seems to work correctly. The only question I have is am I miss reading the code and setting my self up for a mess?

Thanks
Kevin

[BilldaCat]

Originally Posted by Izze_de

exactly same problem for me.
all newsgroups are counted double.
normal forum threads just once.

and this is a clear, just one testpost, user- and hackfree (except this one) forum.
brand new installed.

Confirming this problem as well on my boards. Has anyone found a fix?

[infiniterb]

Originally Posted by infiniterb

I have not. I was wondering if anyone else had similar issues, or if this were something you had come across.

Ok, I spoke with my host and he's saying there's nothing on their end that should prevent the gateway.php from accessing more than one group at a time. So, lierduh, I'm ruling out that my web hosts server allows only one group to be accessed at one time.

Any other ideas?

[Marv]

Originally Posted by lierduh

If you have many newsgroup forums. You can put all your local forums under one main forum. [...]

/search.php?do=getnew&forumid=1
(1 is the main forum id for all your local forums)

Thanks lierduh - that did the trick :up:

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by SaN-DeeP

1. Messages are getting imported twice.. in all forums.

2. Username appears weird in many imported messages.

(*Check attachment for more details)

Regards,

sorry for bumping again, still looking for a solution.

Regards,