NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[Gilby]

Originally posted by dost
Well, I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me how to make it so that it won't start a new thread when the subject is changed in replies

Well, if you really want it that way. What happens sometimes is that people will start a new thread by replying to a different message, which ends up putting it in the existing thread. Then when a reply is made on the forums, it doesn't have the same subject as you might be replying to. However, if you merge a thread together, it'll insert future replies correctly into the thread. I figured that if someone is going to change the subject, they are probably drifting off to another topic which merits new thread, and can be merged if by a moderator if it didn't.

Anyways, here's a change that I think will work, I haven't tested it though:

Replace this line:

$get_threadid=$DB_site->query("SELECT thread.threadid FROM thread,post WHERE thread.threadid=post.threadid and (thread.title='".addslashes($subject)."' OR post.title LIKE '%".addslashes($subject)."' OR thread.title='".addslashes($altsubject)."' OR post.title LIKE '%".addslashes($altsubject)."') and (post.msgid='".preg_replace("/\s/sU","' OR post.msgid='",addslashes(trim($message[references])))."') AND (thread.forumid=". implode(" OR thread.forumid=", $group[forum]) . ") ORDER BY post.dateline DESC LIMIT 1");

With this line:

$get_threadid=$DB_site->query("SELECT thread.threadid FROM thread,post WHERE thread.threadid=post.threadid and (post.msgid='".preg_replace("/\s/sU","' OR post.msgid='",addslashes(trim($message[references])))."') AND (thread.forumid=". implode(" OR thread.forumid=", $group[forum]) . ") ORDER BY post.dateline DESC LIMIT 1");

I'd give you a line number, but I don't have access to a real text editor at the moment. Be careful with this one, there is a query just a few lines down that is similar. This is the first one and comes right after "if ($message[references])".

[Erwin]

It's working like a charm, Gilby. Incoming and outgoing messages work, the crontab has been set hourly and works great, and there has been no errors.

I suspect the reason why my ISP's newserver is not working is because it is hosted in Australia, and my site is hosted in the US. They must have blocked overseas connections.

Anyway, it's all good. Thank you for a GREAT hack. All without needing to change a single file too.

[Gilby]

Glad to hear it's working for you!

Originally posted by Erwin Loh
I suspect the reason why my ISP's newserver is not working is because it is hosted in Australia, and my site is hosted in the US. They must have blocked overseas connections.

Most ISPs will block all connections except those within their own network. Others will allow an external connection, but requires a username and password for that to work. Mine happens to be the later, so I can use that one.

[Gilby]

Sanjiyan, are you still having problems with new post going out to the newsgroup? I ran your script and it executed fully, without problems.

[dost]

Well, thanks a lot Gilby, it worked like a charm. I really appreciate the support you are giving

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by Gilby
Sanjiyan, are you still having problems with new post going out to the newsgroup? I ran your script and it executed fully, without problems.

yeah I am, its just freezing on the newsgroup, its not even trying to connect to the new group to either post or download the new news, yet it downloads the news on the groups before the group in question.. any look working out the problem with that mega-post I did on the previous page?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan


yeah I am, its just freezing on the newsgroup, its not even trying to connect to the new group to either post or download the new news, yet it downloads the news on the groups before the group in question.. any look working out the problem with that mega-post I did on the previous page?

My guess is that you don't have posting abilities on that server. The lack of it saying something like "posting ok" when you connect is one flag, and the "Authentication Failed" is another flag. Can you log into that server from a regular newsreader and post?

Other than that, the server may not be recognizing the end of a post and it then left waiting for more. But before we can go there, we need to determine that you can actually post there.

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by Gilby


My guess is that you don't have posting abilities on that server. The lack of it saying something like "posting ok" when you connect is one flag, and the "Authentication Failed" is another flag. Can you log into that server from a regular newsreader and post?

Other than that, the server may not be recognizing the end of a post and it then left waiting for more. But before we can go there, we need to determine that you can actually post there.

Yep I can post there using both outlook express and gravity news-reader.

[Mark Hewitt]

So on the forumdisplay, they are to long? Or within the thread itself? Can you give me an example of one and how you'd like it chopped down? It can be done where the chopping will just be done on the forumdisplay so that the tables columns don't get smushed, yet in the viewthread, it'll remain the full length.

Yes it's on the forumdisplay I'm talking about some people on usenet have a habit of HavingAVeryLongNameWithoutAnySpacesInItBecauseThey ThinkItLooksCool

If that can be chopped to a limited number of characters that would be great. Doesn't matter so much on showthread as it's only one post that gets affected.

[Tim Wheatley]

Works great here. I installed v4 and now installed v5. But it works, thank you very much