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.

[SEO Report]

Well, I don't think I need this anymore...

For those wishing to speed up the import process, you can setup a private test forum, setup the NNTP hack, import newsgroups and then use impex to copy the imported data from the private forum to the real one.

Not sure if this is a good idea, I'm going to try it right away...

[Slave]

hmm .. not sure if this has been mentioned before ..

Hacks been working brilliantly and there's only one thing I've noticed which bugs me ..

When looking at the list of threads in a forum that is of USENET posts and you hover your mouse over a thread title instead of getting the first post wording pop up you seem to get the last post in the thread.

This is not the normal way the forums work. I've looked in the settings and I can't see anything that would effect this. Is there anyway I can get the first post to show instead of the last post?

As a side note, I did have it set to show time a post was imported into the forums .. I've now changed that to show post made on USENET .. not sure if that will make a difference ..

Any ideas?

[Slave]

Just spotted this thread ..

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=220

Will this solve my problem? .. It's from last year so I would of thought it would of been incorporated into the hack .. has it?

I don't want to add it to my gateway.php if it's already been done somewhere else in the code ..

[Ian Cunningham]

Originally Posted by esfron

What php version are you running ? Take a look at https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=801
.
.

I'm using 4.3.x so it should work

[David_R]

Originally Posted by SEO Report

So If I understood you correctly, if I comment this line in functions_nntp.php

PHP Code:

// Index post for searching
build_post_index($postid, $foruminfo); 


and then use these functions (in Admin CP -> Import & Maintenance):

-> Rebuild Forum Information
-> Rebuild Similar Threads

(or perhaps Rebuild Search Index)

that will speed up the import process since the rebuild function will be called just once (at the end), is that correct?

(imported newsgroups are shown to visitors only after the import process is finished)

does this idea works for you ?
please post your comments if you are able to speed up this SLOW process anyhow.

thanks.

[pco]

Originally Posted by AWS

Just an FYI. This doesn't work with php 5.0.4.

Can't confirm, working fine with 5.0.4

[sdsvtdriver]

Is this hack being supported anymore? Haven't seen much input from the programmers lately...

[mcncyo]

he just posted on may 13

[sdsvtdriver]

Ahh, perhaps my questions were just overlooked

[PeterKjaer]

Hi,

Great MOD you have, but i have some problems;

why does a titel like

Danske skrot f?rger som kunstige rev i DK

change to

=?iso-8859-1?q?Danske_skrot_f=E6rger_som_kunstige_rev_i_DK?="

You can see it here http://www.dacor.dk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9

some have told me it can be a MIME problem, but is there a solution for this?

/Peter