Have Newsletters Posted To Your VB

TESTED ON 2.2.9, SHOULD WORK ON ANY 2.X BOARD

What does it do?

Say you have a newsletter from some site like sitepoint, that you receive and want to make available to your members.
so usually you would check your mailbox, read the mail, do a copy'n'paste and post the newsletter in your forum.
if there is more than one or the one comes quite often the work sums up.

now you can have this hack run by a cronjob or run it manual and have your new newsletters from any pop3-box automatically posted into your board.

detailed features:

• no vb file edits at all, just one file to upload and adapt to your needs
• check any pop3-mailbox for a newsletter
• define as which user thenewsletter should be posted
• define in which forum that user should post
• basic spam check (checks sender name for a string you define)
• url-parsing
• cut off unneeded parts in header and footer that are always the same by strings you define
  DO NOT BREAK ANY COPYRIGHTS WITH THAT
• posted newsletters get deleted after posting from the mailbox, other mails stay intact
• with little adaptation to vb3's database scheme it will be vb3-compatible

instructions:

• preparation: subscribe to a newsletter
  i personally would use a dedicated email-account just for the newsletter/-s to prevent spam
• download the attachment, which contains a single php-file
• rename the file to whatever you like, like newsletterxyz.php
• edit the file and adapt it to your needs, like mailbox-variables and the username as who the newsletter should be posted
• Check if you have scott macvicars last post on forumhome hack installed as you have to edit another line in the file then (line 193)
• close and upload to [FORUMROOT]
• either run it manually once in a while in browser or setup a cronjob if your host supports this
  
  THATS IT
  
• for uninstallation: delete the file off your server

you have to use a new copy of the hack for every newsletter you subscribe to

screenshot wont be provided as you would only see some user having posted some thread, nothing exciting

the hack has run for about a month on my board and has posted about 500 threads so far, without a problem

as i have rearranged the variables so that you can change all variables in the header and dont need to scroll through the whole file, i might have made a mistake in this process.
thats why its in beta for now.

please try it, feel free to comment and ask for support, and please click "install" if you decide to use it

finally: i will not be held responsible for any harm you do to your board by using this hack

EDIT: 27.05.03 trouble with cron when running from admin-dir, updated to have it reside in forumroot

[gmarik]

great, how is 2.3.2?

[X-Caliber]

Seems that this hack has a problem with database access.

Warning: main(./config.php) [function.main]: failed to create stream: No such file or directory in /www/htdocs/headpres/forum/admin/global.php on line 96

Can anyone help out on this.

[gopherhockey]

Anyone working on something like this for vb3?

[kreftt]

im running this on vb3 with over 3000 posts by this hack so far.
but apparently it doesnt work for others.
if you want to try it, email me.

greetz