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).

[antigravityboy]

Yeah
First I wanted to say thanks to GameCrash for the cool interface addon. I finally got the script running on my bulletin board. I just have 1 problem to work out. When it gets picture files, .jpg's it does not display them as links to a picture it shows up as something like this.
begin 644 Catherine_Bell_02.jpg
M_]C_VP!#``$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`
0$!`0$!`0$!
M`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0'_VP!#`0$!`0$!`
0$!`0$!`0$!
M`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`0$!`
0$!`0$!`0$!
M`0$!`0'_P``1"`#(`FP#`2(``A$!`Q$!_\0`'P```@(#`0$!` 0$`````````
M``D("@8'"P4$`P(!_\0`1!```00"`0,#`P,"`@<%!@<`!`(#! 08!!P@`$1()
etc, etc,

Anybody have any idea on how I can fix this.
Thanks a lot!

[mood]

Gilby,

Since upgrading to VB 2.2.4 my gated groups show me all messages as though they would be from a user in my Ignore list though none are as they are pseudo gateway "guests"

I'm using your last release with the mail list addition.

Any ideas?

PS: Could you get any results with the three way gateway? (list/nntp/forum)

Thanks for your help

[Gilby]

Originally posted by mood
Gilby,

Since upgrading to VB 2.2.4 my gated groups show me all messages as though they would be from a user in my Ignore list though none are as they are pseudo gateway "guests"

I'm using your last release with the mail list addition.

Any ideas?

Can you point me at an example of this? I'm still running 2.2.2 here.

Originally posted by mood

PS: Could you get any results with the three way gateway? (list/nntp/forum)

Nope, not yet.

[Okiewan]

Awesome hack, can't wait to get it working
Had problems with my isp's news, went on someone's suggestion here and signed-up with mammothnews.net.

Checked the account with outlook... no problems. Still getting the same issues as before (with other news servers)

Help please?

here is what is displayed using showqueries:

Query: SELECT template FROM template WHERE title='options'
Time before: 0.03379499912262
Time after: 0.034965038299561

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT sessionhash,userid,host,useragent,styleid FROM session WHERE sessionhash='9322c3bbd3bd5a1472c3fe8344acbbc5' AND host='66.187.5.96' AND useragent='Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;'
Time before: 0.041798949241638
Time after: 0.042446970939636

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT user.*,userfield.* FROM user LEFT JOIN userfield ON userfield.userid=user.userid WHERE user.userid='16119'
Time before: 0.042775988578796
Time after: 0.043499946594238

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT templatesetid,replacementsetid,userselect FROM style WHERE styleid='1'
Time before: 0.044497013092041
Time after: 0.044846057891846

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT template,title
FROM template
WHERE (title IN ('gobutton','timezone','username_loggedout','usern ame_loggedin','phpinclude','headinclude','header', 'footer','forumjumpbit','forumjump','nav_linkoff', 'nav_linkon','navbar','nav_joiner','pagenav','page nav_curpage','pagenav_firstlink','pagenav_lastlink ','pagenav_nextlink','pagenav_pagelink','pagenav_p revlink')
AND (templatesetid=-1 OR templatesetid='12'))


ORDER BY templatesetid
Time before: 0.045173048973083
Time after: 0.053406953811646

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT COUNT(*) AS count FROM session WHERE userid=0 AND lastactivity>1017184919
Time before: 0.055305004119873
Time after: 0.065440058708191

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT(userid)) AS count FROM session WHERE session.userid>0 AND session.lastactivity>1017184919
Time before: 0.065888047218323
Time after: 0.068994998931885

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT * FROM usergroup WHERE usergroupid=6
Time before: 0.088593006134033
Time after: 0.089588046073914

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT varname,value FROM nntp_settings
Time before: 0.27212595939636
Time after: 0.29269301891327

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT * FROM nntp_groups WHERE enabled=1
Time before: 0.29306304454803
Time after: 0.29737997055054

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home2/okiewan/public_html/forums3/global.php:120) in /home2/okiewan/public_html/forums3/gateway.php on line 483
1 group(s) gatewayed.
200 enews1.newsguy.com NNRP server INN 1.90.12 1-Feb-02 ready (posting ok).
381 PASS required
281 Ok
211 10644 348343 359040 rec.motorcycles.dirt
ArrayLogging in to news.mammothnews.net, group rec.motorcycles.dirt
Query: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.attachmentid,post.pagetext,post.showsignatu re,post.ipaddress,thread.pollid,thread.title,post. threadid,thread.forumid FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND post.dateline=thread.dateline AND post.userid=thread.postuserid AND (thread.forumid=80)
Time before: 1.1375050544739
Time after: 1.1587400436401

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.attachmentid,post.pagetext,post.showsignatu re,post.ipaddress,thread.title,post.threadid,threa d.forumid,thread.msgid,thread.prefix FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND (thread.forumid=80)
Time before: 1.1590980291367
Time after: 1.1634229421616

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks in advance and thanks for the great hack.
In addition, It did work with the test server listed earlier in this thread.

[Robert Basil]

Just to let Gilby know, we are running the 1.9 version of his script and VB 2.2.1 with www.newsranger.com as our news host using a crontab every 15 minutes with about 9,000 usenet messages (100+ added daily), and everything is running great!

I plan on adding a few mailing lists (with the new SMTP support) sometime this weekend and will let you know how it works.

Thanks for the great hack bro!

P.S. We are on our own dedicated server and have not noticed any spikes is processor usage at all.

http://www.sportbikeworld.com/status

[Okiewan]

Disregard! Posts are coming down. Got to thinking about the error about "headers already... " Changed the "last post" number, it started working.

[Okiewan]

New problem.. trying to get a cron job set up and she no work:

25,55 * * * * lynx-source http://dirtrider.net/forums3/gateway.php?log=cron >/dev/null

sure does look right to me, any ideas?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Okiewan
New problem.. trying to get a cron job set up and she no work:

25,55 * * * * lynx-source http://dirtrider.net/forums3/gateway.php?log=cron >/dev/null

sure does look right to me, any ideas?

you need a space between the lynx and -source

[GameCrash]

One problem I have is that the messages are not added to the correct threads when they have different titles... fastforwards hack does this without problems (I think he uses any messageid or something like this...)

[Gilby]

Originally posted by GameCrash
One problem I have is that the messages are not added to the correct threads when they have different titles... fastforwards hack does this without problems (I think he uses any messageid or something like this...)

I designed it to do it that way simply because when the subject is changed, most likely it was done because it warrented it's own thread, or maybe it even was supposed to be a new thread.

Go back in this thread and you'll find a change that can be made to change how this works.

[GameCrash]

Really? I didn't see something like this, sorry. I'll search for it

[Okiewan]

thanks, will give it a try
I'm thinking it's not executing a *.php file?

[trainer]

is there a free newsgroup place that i can setup an accout to use this addon? or do i have to pay a site to get access to newsgroups to work with this addon

[rawnet]

Trainer - there are a few mentioned in this thread - likely that you'll have to pay for it, but only $10/month or something - worry more about your ISP charges as your database size and bandwidth go through the roof!!

[rawnet]

Hello,

How do we stop Usenet postings from appearing when someone clicks on the "New Threads Since Last Visit" link in the forums?

I have installed the hack okay, but received a lot of complaints as my users became lost in the mix between my forum postings and newsgroup postings.

Any ideas how to disable this? Is a hack available? I'd also like to stop them appearing in my Latest Discussion block of vbPortal (but I suspect that's a rather different matter!!!).

Any ideas guys?

Ross