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.

[AWS]

Have you checked the newsgroup? Usenet posts when using a newsreader don't get posted right away. The poster might have posted and didn't see it appear and posted again.
I don't know what is cauing the weird username. Maybe a bug in the persons news reader.

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by AWS

Have you checked the newsgroup? Usenet posts when using a newsreader don't get posted right away. The poster might have posted and didn't see it appear and posted again.
I don't know what is cauing the weird username. Maybe a bug in the persons news reader.

I have checked couple of times about this problem but not able to debug...
When importing from newsgroups, couple of messages gets imported twice or thrice as well the weird username problem appears while browsing those forums.

Regards,

[BilldaCat]

Originally Posted by BilldaCat

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

bumping this again, still looking for a solution.

(posts being counted twice in total count)

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by BilldaCat

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

Will fix this non-critical problem before next release. I need to set up a test forum to debug. In the meantime, please use the counter-reset function.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by infiniterb

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?

Have you checked with NNTP server host instead of web host?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by SaN-DeeP

I have checked couple of times about this problem but not able to debug...
When importing from newsgroups, couple of messages gets imported twice or thrice as well the weird username problem appears while browsing those forums.

Regards,

Not sure why it gets imported twice. Have you confirmed this with a normal news reader?

Weird user name problem is caused by other language encoding in the user name. The script has ability to decode, make sure your php server has "imap_mime_header_decode" function.

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Not sure why it gets imported twice. Have you confirmed this with a normal news reader?

Weird user name problem is caused by other language encoding in the user name. The script has ability to decode, make sure your php server has "imap_mime_header_decode" function.

"imap_mime_header_decode" function is enabled on server.
I checked the message with normal news readers, only 1 message appears in news reader.

[Slave]

Just installed .. worked like a charm ..

[joeMJ]

Hello,

I installed this script as recommended. Port 119 is open and it synchronized Newsgroup (with some ISO/ encoding problems) the newsgroup in my forums. I'd like to synchronize msnews, microsoft.public.de.smartphone.

Server is Win2003, Web Edition, actual php and mysql.

Link to NG=>VB Forums is here

Problem:

I answered a post in the newsgroup (as you see here).
Then I manually started gateway.php

Errormessage I get, when I started gateway.php:

Datenbankfehler in vBulletin 3.0.7:

Ungueltige SQL-Abfrage: 
			SELECT email, field1 AS signature, usertitle, customtitle
			FROM user AS user
			LEFT JOIN userfield AS userfield
			ON user.userid = userfield.userid
			WHERE user.userid = 1
		
mysql error: Unknown column 'field1' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Datum: 28.02.2005 13:07:43
Skript: http://www.mobilejoe.de/joeforums/gateway.php
Referer: 
Benutzername: joe
IP-Adresse: 217.84.8.114

debug=1:

Gateway version 2.3.2  1 group(s) gatewayed.

Connecting to server, server says: 200 NNTP Service 6.0.3790.206 Version: 6.0.3790.206 Posting Allowed 

Info for microsoft.public.de.smartphone at msnews.microsoft.com: 211 137 1040 1212 microsoft.public.de.smartphone

<html><head><title>mobilejoe.de Datenbankfehler</title><style type="text/css"><!--.error { font: 11px tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; }--></style></head>
<body></table></td></tr></table></form>
<blockquote><p class="error">&nbsp;</p><p class="error"><b>Es trat ein Problem mit der mobilejoe.de Datenbank auf.</b><br />
Bitte versuchen Sie es erneut, indem Sie die Seite neu laden (<a href="javascript:window.location=window.location;">Aktualisieren, Refresh, Reload</a> usw. im Browser klicken).</p><p class="error">Eine E-Mail wurde an den <a href="mailto:joe@mobilejoe.de">Technischen Administrator</a> geschickt, den Sie ebenfalls kontaktieren k?nnen, falls das Problem weiterhin auftritt.</p><p class="error">Wir entschuldigen uns f?r die Unannehmlichkeiten.</p><form><textarea class="error" rows="15" cols="100" wrap="off">Datenbankfehler in vBulletin 3.0.7:

Ungueltige SQL-Abfrage: 
			SELECT email, field1 AS signature, usertitle, customtitle
			FROM user AS user
			LEFT JOIN userfield AS userfield
			ON user.userid = userfield.userid
			WHERE user.userid = 1
		
mysql error: Unknown column 'field1' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Datum: 28.02.2005 14:55:25
Skript: http://www.mobilejoe.de/joeforums/gateway.php?debug=1
Referer: 
Benutzername: joe
IP-Adresse: 217.84.8.114
</textarea></form></blockquote>

</body></html>

(screenshot below)

Can please anyone help me in that problem?


Thank you very much!
cheers
joe

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by joeMJ

Hello,

Datenbankfehler in vBulletin 3.0.7:

Ungueltige SQL-Abfrage: 
			SELECT email, field1 AS signature, usertitle, customtitle
			FROM user AS user
			LEFT JOIN userfield AS userfield
			ON user.userid = userfield.userid
			WHERE user.userid = 1
		
mysql error: Unknown column 'field1' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Datum: 28.02.2005 13:07:43
Skript: http://www.mobilejoe.de/joeforums/gateway.php
Referer: 
Benutzername: joe
IP-Adresse: 217.84.8.114

joe

Basically it says 'field1' field is not presented in your 'userfield' table. I can't explain why you don't. You can check whether you have 'userfield' table, and is there 'field1' in this table. 'field1' stores the signature of the users. Failing that, you can alway turn off the signature in the settings, or in the post interface.