[RELEASE] Usenet Gateway for vB 2.01

Description:

This hack provides a gateway to selected usenet groups. The entire usenet group is mirrored locally. Posts submitted locally to mirrored newsgroups will also be sent out to usenet. A single perl script is executed via cron that collects news and posts any outgoing articles. Incoming messages are parsed against customizable spam filters and threaded correctly before being placed in your forums. By default, no personal information is sent to usenet other than the posters username and whatever you have globally configured as a footer and organization. The option does exist for a user to include a custom email to use for usenet posts. After initial installation (which involves creating some new tables, adding a few columns to existing vB tables, and entering the database connection information to the news script) configuration is completed via the vB control panel.

• See it in action at dBforums.com (usenet forums are at the bottom)
• Download latest version for vB 2.2.4

Current version is 20020323 for vB2.xx

Current feature list:

• correct threading of outgoing posts on usenet
• full control panel integration
• email notification to usenet replies
• emoticon translation into vb icons
• vb code removal or conversion prior to posting to usenet
• hyperlinked urls in messages
• color coded, italicized & indented quotes
• vB style quote to usenet style quote conversions for outgoing posts
• logging of outgoing posts
• support for multiple news servers
• support for seperate footers per forum in outgoing posts
• multi-language (selectable) handling of quoted MIME printable headers (for all those funny foreign characters)
• handling of mailing archive groups
• flexible spam control and replacement variable options for incoming and outgoing messages
• configurable auto-expire option
• option for users to show email address in their outgoing usenet posts (may be different than normal one in profile
• option to enable/disable user signatures on outgoing posts.
• fully compatible with vB moderation functions

Still to be done:

• canceling of messages after they have been sent to usenet via control message in accordance with RFC1036.
• binary attachment support
• email to PM gateway

Screeshots:
Main Options
More Options
Configuration of Newsgroups
Add New Newsgroups
Spam Control
What an imported usenet article looks like in vB

The latest version of this hack will always be in this first post of the thread.

Before asking questions in this thread, please read all the posts in this thread. If your question goes unanswered, it will probably be because the question has already been answered countless times in this thread.

This hack was created for use on my forums and will only be supported as time permits.


Links to required Perl Modules

• News::NNTPClient
• Net::SMTP
• MIME::WordDecoder
• Text::AutoFormat
• Mail::Address
• URI::Find
• DBI
• DBD::MySQL
• Date::Parse
• HTML::Entities

[DarkReaper]

NNTPERROR: 502 You are not in my access file. Goodbye.
Connecting to news.mindspring.com... Connected
News::NNTPClient unexpected EOF on News::NNTPClient::SOCK1 at ./newnews.pl line 285
Authentication failure at ./newnews.pl line 285, <SOCK1> chunk 1.
News::NNTPClient unexpected EOF on News::NNTPClient::SOCK1 at ./newnews.pl line 0
Sending authentication info... [root@linweb01 usenet]#

???

[fastforward]

It simply means you do not have permission to access the nntp server (news.mindspring.com).

[DarkReaper]

Yea, I figured that out. Thanks though.

I'm having trouble finding news servers with lots of posts, that allow posting, and are free. Could anyone give me any suggestions for good usenet servers?

[NgtCrwlr]

I've had very good service from http://www.newscene.com/ They offer month to month at US$13/mo.

I spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with free news feeds. For me the time involved in keeping an eye on them and then searching for new ones when the one you are using decides to go off line for a week or two at time, was a pain and cost me way more than $13/mo.

On top of that Newscene knows that I'm pulling news for vBulliten and they said no problem and that they would work with me on spam issues that may arise. So far I have not allowed posting from our BBS to Usenet, I was waiting on the moderated usenet post fix from Paul. Health issues kept me from updating till now. I'm planning to upgrade to the latest unsent hack this weekend.

I'll keep everyone informed if I run into any posting problems with Newscene.com

Cheers!

[fastforward]

Originally posted by NgtCrwlr
I've had very good service from [url]So far I have not allowed posting from our BBS to Usenet, I was waiting on the moderated usenet post fix from Paul. Health issues kept me from updating till now. I'm planning to upgrade to the latest unsent hack this weekend.

Larry, in case you weren't aware, moderation support has been in for a few versions. It simply relies on the normal vB moderation process. If an outgoing usenet post is awaiting moderation, it won't be propogated to usenet.

[NgtCrwlr]

I was pretty much out of action for over a month, but I'm back in the game. I just finished upgrading to vB 2.0.3 last weekend and this coming weekend I hope to make the upgrade to the latest usenet hack.

I did get the e-mail that you sent weeks ago with instructions for adding the moderated post fix. I was out of commission and just couldn't get to it then.

I'm looking forward to this weekend.

[DarkReaper]

I'm having problems with messages showing up in raw form. I've set mime decoding for ISO-8859-1 and it still doesn't work:

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C120E7.4B0F1B60 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

When I install UT Patch 436 I can't play Direct3D, because when I do, I = can't see the menus in UT
Desktop, but I can only play with OpenGL, but = then again it lagging so much I can't play, my
videocard is TNT2 Pro = with 32mb ram, I've updated the drivers but it still won't do, so I'm =
thinking of buying a new card.. Can anyone help me with this problem? I will also buy a new card,
what's the best choice between = GForce2-MX/64ram or GForce2-GS/32ram?

Thanks In Advance

Roger=20

Rogers Place=20

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C120E7.4B0F1B60 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META
content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" = http-equiv=3DContent-Type> <META content=3D"MSHTML
5.00.2614.3500" name=3DGENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=3DVerdana size=3D2>When I install UT Patch 436 I can't = play=20 Direct3D, because
when I do, I can't see the menus in UT = Desktop, but=20 I can only play with
OpenGL, but then again it lagging so much I=20 can't play, my videocard is TNT2 Pro with
32mb ram, I've updated = the=20 drivers but it still won't do, so I'm thinking of buying a
new=20 card..</FONT></DIV>
<DV><FONT face=3DVerdana size=3D2>Can anyone help me with this=20 problem?</FONT></DIV>
<DVI><FONT face=3DVerdana size=3D2>I will also buy a new card, what's = the best=20 choice between
</FONT><FONT face=3DVerdana size=3D2>GForce2-MX/64ram or=20 GForce2-GS/32ram?</FONT></DIV>
<DVII> </DIV>
<DVIII><FONT face=3Dverdana size=3D2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIX><FONT face=3Dverdana size=3D2>Thanks In Advance</FONT></DIV>
<DX><FONT face=3Dverdana size=3D2></FONT> </DIV>
<DXI><FONT face=3Dverdana size=3D2><BR>Roger <BR><BR><A=20
href=3D"http://hjem.sol.no/andersen-media/?noframe">Rogers Place</A>=20
</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>

------=_NextPart_000_000A_01C120E7.4B0F1B60--

[fastforward]

Originally posted by DarkReaper
I'm having problems with messages showing up in raw form. I've set mime decoding for ISO-8859-1 and it still doesn't work:

The MIME decoder doesn't decode HTML or binary attachments. All it does is convert MIME Quoted Printable Strings back to the original form. It allows umlauts, accents and those funny Scandinavian characters to be displayed correctly.

What you're seeing is the result of users not complying with Usenet etiquette. They're probably using Netscape or Outlook to post news without bothering to configure it.

[shri]

I've got a spam filter on the term

Content-Type: text/html

Shri

[DarkReaper]

Originally posted by shri
I've got a spam filter on the term

Content-Type: text/html

Shri

Wouldn't that block the entire message? Even if half of it is in text/plain and the other is text/html? If not, how do I set it to only block the html part of the message?

Will there be HTML decoding support in upcoming versions?