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 nafae
well, I installed it and set for alt.comp.programming 31 0 (usenet url) NULL NULL 1 under nntp-groups, then I run gateway.php, it downloads a file that sayes

1 group(s) gatewayed.
Logging in to (usenet).com, group alt.comp.programming

but when I check forum 31 (http://www.coderforums.net/forumdisp...?s=&forumid=31) nothing appears there...

Is the script running from the same network as your nntp server?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by saab340
Also I just remembered, I changed the time to show correct time... ie not time when cron (ie when downloaded)

and I see that some of the posts which are replied... ie Re: something

will show in different posts. What is the cause of this? time issue?

Thanks (Gilby You are doing a great job)

this is the mod for time....
// if ($group[lastmsg] == 0){
$date = strtotime($message[date]);
//} else {
//$date = time();
//}

With that code change, youdon't get a parsing error? You commented out the } which should produce a parse error, unless you added one somewhere else. Uncomment that and see if you still have problems.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by nafae
no, my nntp server is the one that my isp uses

Most ISPs will not allow you to access the server from outside the network of the ISP. They only allow local users to use their news server. You may be able to use it if you put in your username and password that you use with that ISP.

[nafae]

so the next step would be, assuming that I can't access my isp's usnet group... I purchase a username to another usenet server? What are the typical prices and where can I buy a usenet account

[Gilby]

Originally posted by nafae
so the next step would be, assuming that I can't access my isp's usnet group... I purchase a username to another usenet server? What are the typical prices and where can I buy a usenet account

You can check with your webhost to see if they have a usenet server you can use. You can install php on your home computer and run the gateway script from there (connecting to your servers mysql database), or you can get a usenet account. Typically, they cost under $10 a month. I haven't used any of them though, but just do a search in google for them and you should have no problem finding one.

[nafae]

ok, thanks for your help.

[saab340]

remove // from } ?

I did this like you suggested early on, to show correct thread date...

I dont understand? It seems correct.

Please confirm.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by saab340
Also I just remembered, I changed the time to show correct time... ie not time when cron (ie when downloaded)

and I see that some of the posts which are replied... ie Re: something

will show in different posts. What is the cause of this? time issue?

Ignore my last thing... I just saw it wrong. What exactly is happening? Which of the times that you used "posts" above should it be "threads"?

[saab340]

My problems are [] listed right before each post on the topic, and when replied... they will show up on a different post.

some Re: posts also show as a different topic.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by saab340
My problems are [] listed right before each post on the topic, and when replied... they will show up on a different post.


some Re: posts also show as a different topic.

That shouldn't be happening. Is the prefix column in the thread table set to default to NULL? If not, change it to do that.

Otherwise, if all else fails, we can hardcode it to not use my undocumented feature for you:

Change:

		if ($prefix[$newthread[forumid]] and !$isreply){
			$cat = "[".$prefix[$newthread[forumid]]."] ";
		} elseif ($isreply and $newthread[prefix]) {
			$cat = "Re: [".$newthread[prefix]."] ";
		} elseif ($isreply){
			$cat = "Re: ";
		} else { $cat = ''; }

Into this:

		if ($isreply){
			$cat = "Re: ";
		} else { $cat = ''; }