[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

[fastforward]

Release 20010805

• Certified for 2.03 / instructions updated
• Slight change in the way usenet post count is calculated on index for performance reasons.
• Added support for custom usenet signature
• Added option in newnews.pl to ease running on win32

Upgrading involves replacing your existing newnews.pl, replacing the usenet_settings table (make a note of your existing options), and configuring the new custom signature option if desired. Full instructions are in UPGRADE.TXT.

Download Here.

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

[DarkReaper]

Custom profile field title for public email address
(requires additional custom profile field)
Enter the EXACT title of the custom user profile field you are using for the public email address options described above. (see instruction for more information)

I didn't see anything in the instructions about this....

[webhost]

problem in next post at bottom, but corrected

[webhost]

FROM LAST MESSAGE

Note: If the vB code edits have not been made, usenet posts WILL ALWAYS show in the results.\', \'yesno\', \'10\', \'0\', \'1\');
INSERT INTO usenet_setting VALUES ( \'35\', \'Send posts to usenet?\', \'postingenabled\', \'1\', \'This is a global switch to toggle the propogation of local posts to usenet. Posts will still appear in the local forum but will never be sent to usenet and will NOT be queued for later sending. Posts made while this switch is off will remain as local posts only.\', \'yesno\', \'5\', \'0\', \'0\');
INSERT INTO usenet_setting VALUES ( \'36\', \'Quote Size\', \'quote_size\', \'1\', \'This setting controls the text size of usenet quotes. Pixels will NOT work. The only sensible values are 1 (small) and 2 (normal).\', \'\', \'3\', \'0\', \'0\');
INSERT INTO usenet_setting VALUES ( \'37\', \'Custom profile field title for usenet signature(requires additional custom profile field)\', \'signature_profile_id\', \'Usenet Signature\', \'Enter the EXACT title of the custom user profile field you are using for the usenet signature option. (see instruction for more information)\', \'\', \'5\', \'7\', \'1\');

INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'1\', \'Default Server Information\', \'5\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'2\', \'Article Header & Footer Information\', \'10\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'3\', \'Article Display\', \'15\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'50\', \'Script Settings\', \'50\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'4\', \'Incoming Usenet Threads & Posts\', \'20\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'6\', \'Automatic Expire\', \'35\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'5\', \'Outgoing Posts to Usenet\', \'25\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'10\', \'vB Integration\', \'40\');
INSERT INTO usenet_settinggroup VALUES ( \'9\', \'Debug & Special\', \'99\');

MySQL said: Table 'realweb_forums.usenet_setting_group' doesn't exist

This does exist

[george_proost]

TRUNCATE TABLE usenet_setting_group;

becomes

TRUNCATE TABLE usenet_settinggroup;

should solve your problem

[webhost]

Thank you George that did the trick, so today is going to be a good day after all.

Any idea on the email option, didn't see any instructions.

Thanks Again

[fastforward]

Originally posted by webhost
Thank you George that did the trick, so today is going to be a good day after all.

Any idea on the email option, didn't see any instructions.

Thanks Again

Just add a 'custom profile field' called whatever you put in your usenet control panel (the deault is 'Usenet Email Address'). Then set the 'Use custom email address' option to YES. If a user enters something in this field, that is the email that will be sent out on all usenet posts.

Similar instructions apply for the custom Usenet Signature option.

Hi,

I really love to install this function for my board, but I have no experience with Perl and my board is using with a hosting services (it does support Perl and I know the exact Perl directory)

Is it possible to install this nice function for my board?

Thank you

[orca]

If you have the needed PERL modules, yes, you can use it. If you don't have the modules and your host doesn't want to install them, you can do it yourself. Just get the modules and put only the *.pm file in the correct folder. You may do a directory structure like:

/news (inside that is newnews.pl)
/news/lib

Inside /news/lib you make subdirectories named after the needed Perl Module like:

/news/lib/Date
/news/lib/Email

etc.

These directories don't have to be in the webdirectory. Now, the script needs to know where those modules are. So uncomment the line #use lib... With the directories above it should look sth like this:

use lib "/absolute/path/to/news/lib";

To know which modules are missing you can run the configured newnews.pl with perl newnews.pl at the command line. Read the error message and it wil tell what it misses.

Don't forget to chmod 755 all *.pm and *.pl files!!

Thanks for your prompt advice.