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]

Originally Posted by Marv

Hi,

I don?t know wether I?m the only one having this problem but I wouldappreciate if someone could give me a hint, where and how I could fixthis.

In my forums all posts appear as they should. That means theusenet-code is getting parsed into vb-code, spaces, blanklines..all topnotch.
My problem is the reversed parsing, means vb-code parsed into usenet-code and the appearing in the usenet.

A forum post which looks like this:


In the usenet post it shows up like this:


instead of


So, it seems that a seperater is missing somewhere and reading of thoseusenet posts via newsreader really becomes a mess if you have a fewqoutes in it beside long text. I?ve tried to fix that on my own but Icouldn?t find out where I?ld have to insert the </br> .

Could someone do me the favor to have a look into the gateway.php ? May be I was just to blind to see..

This occures when someone replies to the quote straight after the vbcode. eg. Instead of writing the reply in the new line. They reply was written like like:

PHP Code:

...[/QUOTE]Reply was here 


I will check the code out in a few days.

[Marv]

Originally Posted by lierduh

I will check the code out in a few days.

Thx, lierduh.

[mcncyo]

Is there anyway of putting word that you have in the Censorship Options got to a moderation area. I am try to figure out a good way of stop have spam and sex post put on my christian message board.

[szy]

Hello.

Thanks for your hack, but...

gateway.php seems to do nothing. What should be the reason? Wrong permissions? But - to what? I haven't found any directions about permissions?

This is the URL. All files are transferred to server, MySQL table are created, groups is configured as id=30

Thanks for help,
Szy.

[jzewatsky]

Thank you sooo much for writing and supporting this hack! This is exactly what my forum has needed!

Is there anyway of putting word that you have in the Censorship Options got to a moderation area. I am try to figure out a good way of stop have spam and sex post put on my christian message board.

Try the "Global Killfile" setting at the bottom of "NNTP Gateway Settings". If I read the instructions there, you could set the code to look for a word, set of words, string of characters in specific parts of the message. If that/those word(s) are present that message will not be turned into a thread. The text in the box should help you configure it to work the way you want. Hope that helps!

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Again thanks for the great hack!!!

[chas_h]

First of all, thanks for a wonderful hack. I've been using this successfully for weeks at my photo related forums.
My question is this. Can I have the same gateway.php working for 2 different installs of Vbulletin? I also have a gaming site hosted on the same server and would like to import different groups for that forum. Either that or can you run two seperate instances of gateway.php on the same server?

Has anyone tried either of these methods?

Tia,
Chas.

[AWS]

Just an FYI. This doesn't work with php 5.0.4. I have to use 4.3.11 to run gateway.php and 5.0.4 for the sites.
I upgraded php and noticed that my usenet forums last post was 2 days behind the rest of the forums. I ran it at command prompt and got the error mime.php and nntp.php have to be in ./includes folder. I even set full paths to try and make it work and it didn't. I set up 4.3.11 to run gateway.php only and it started working.

[mcncyo]

Originally Posted by jzewatsky

Thank you sooo much for writing and supporting this hack! This is exactly what my forum has needed!




Try the "Global Killfile" setting at the bottom of "NNTP Gateway Settings". If I read the instructions there, you could set the code to look for a word, set of words, string of characters in specific parts of the message. If that/those word(s) are present that message will not be turned into a thread. The text in the box should help you configure it to work the way you want. Hope that helps!

Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Again thanks for the great hack!!!

thanks for the info. I didn't even seen that option.

[mcncyo]

I am having a big problem. I keep getting this error and can't find out why

<br /><strong>Warning</strong>: makemeathumbnail(includes/functions_image.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in <strong>/includes/functions_nntp.php</strong> on line <strong>735</strong><br /><br />
<b>Fatal error</b>: makemeathumbnail(): Failed opening required 'includes/functions_image.php' (include_path='/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/lib/php') in <b>/home/website/public_html/forum/includes/functions_nntp.php</b> on line <b>735</b><br />

[Ian Cunningham]

Is there any way to make the posts load into more than 1 forum at a time, and to stage the import slowly - so as not to bring the server to its knees?

I'm trying to import a few newsgroups with lots 50,000 posts in each and it brings my server to a halt!