NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V3.5.0Alpha 1 (21 Jul 2005)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack was originally coded by Gilby for vB2. I modified the hack to work with vB3 and have been maintaining and improving the hack. I have now done the modification for this to work with vB3.5.

The very original hack by Gilby can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15

The vB3 version can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152

Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files.
No need to manually run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

It is not a must to click "INSTALL" for this hack if you use it, I do try better answering the questions from people who do.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the second post within this thread first. It may be surprising, but it is possible your question is answered in the adminCP NNTP settings.

Please always provide more details about your problem. Examples and debug messages will certainly help. Well, if you don't even try to have some effort to compose your question, the answer you get may also not include much effort.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 21 2005 (release version 3.5.0 Alpha 1)

AdminCP xml file is written by Kadence.

• Ported to work with vB3.5.
• Existing bug fixes.
• Debug message can be sent by email or logged in vB Tast Scheduler.
• Known problem: image attachment thumb nail creation still needs work.
• Needs to be done: Documentation.

Quick installation instruction:
1) Upload files to their correct directory
2) Enter AdminCP, click on NNTP Settings once to install/upgrade. Change settings to your like.
3) Click on NNTP Groups once to install/upgrade.
3a) For new install. Run once
http://www.yourdomain.com/setlastmsg.php

Delete this file afterwards.
If you are upgrading from an older version. There is no need to upload this file. Actually this file should not be there except brand new install.

4)
Manually run in debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

[Rik Brown]

First I want to thank lierduh for his work on developing this mod and krandall for his fixes. We've been importing 3-years of messages from a large newsgroup this week and all appears working well so far (haven't tried exporting yet).

While it would be best to filter out spam and other junk in the importation phase [killfile], one obviously doesn't know what and who to scan for at first. Has anyone developed a series of mySQL commands for the post-importation of messages to work on cleaning up the spam and bad users? If so, could you please advise a sample here that I and perhaps others can build on?

In my case, I would like to:

1) Posts

- delete any post with a URL in it (99% spam)
- delete any post with certain keywords in them
- delete any post by specified users
- delete any post with a URL in the User Name

2) Threads

- delete any thread with a URL in the title
- delete any thread with certain keywords in them
- delete any thread by specified users
- delete any thread with a URL in the User Name

Thanks. -- Rik

[KidCharlemane]

Unfortunately I keep getting an "out of memory" error when I run this hack. Ive used it before with success but for some reason now, it's just not happening. Anyone got any ideas how I can work around the problem? Here is the actual error:

"Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 3840 bytes) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/trianglecycling.com/httpdocs/includes/functions_newpost.php(181) : regexp code on line 1"

Any ideas?

[Aylwin]

Originally Posted by KidCharlemane

Unfortunately I keep getting an "out of memory" error when I run this hack.

Any ideas?

Have you tried allocating more memory to PHP? I can't remember the syntax right now but you can set it in php.ini or .htaccess.

[KidCharlemane]

I dont think I can.. the domain is on a Plesk based system and I dont have access to the administrator control panel.

This is happening on the initial import so I feel pretty sure if I could get all the messages imported, the recent postings between intervals wont cause this problem. I'm trying to import two groups tho with a lot of posts so I dont know how long it will take to actually get them all. It would be nice if you could import XX amount of posts, have the script terminate and then restart to get them all. I dont think memory usage was ever a consideration to the original author of the hack.

[TMM-TT]

Shouldn't a dedicated (?) server have much memory available?

[KidCharlemane]

Depends on how the server is configured. If you run a lot of forums on one machine, you kind of need to keep scripts in check so nothing goes out of control and slows everything else down.

The box I have the partiulcar forum Im testing this hack on isnt mine and the way its configured, PHP scripts are limited to 8mb of memory.

[TMM-TT]

Originally Posted by KidCharlemane

The box I have the partiulcar forum Im testing this hack on isnt mine and the way its configured, PHP scripts are limited to 8mb of memory.

My php.ini contains this row:

memory_limit = 8M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB)


... and I don't have any problem with the gateway-script. Strange?

[Aylwin]

Originally Posted by KidCharlemane

I dont think I can.. the domain is on a Plesk based system and I dont have access to the administrator control panel.

Doesn't Plesk support custom php.ini files? I believe version 7 did but maybe not newer versions. Or maybe the webhost admins need to enable/allow it. Perhaps you could try to check with them.

My webhost uses cPanel which used to support custom php.ini files. Unfortunately though, it doesn't work anymore after they upgraded to PHP5 (I guess cPanel was also upgraded).

[Aylwin]

How to check incoming posts for valid forum users

I use this mod as a mailing list gateway. Many of the people on our mailing lists are also forum members. So I thought it would be good to check for valid forum users. No guarantees whatsoever but if anyone's interested, here's how I did it.

In gateway.php, look for:

				//Separate name and email address
				$from_name = from_name($message['from']);
				$from_email = from_email($message['from']);

Below, add:

				//Check if the sender is a user
				$userinfo = $db->query_first("SELECT userid,username FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE email = '" . $from_email . "'");
				if ($userinfo['userid']) { $userid = $userinfo['userid']; } else { $userid = 0; }
				if ($userinfo['username']) { $from_name = $userinfo['username']; }

Look for both instances of:

					$postid = insert_post($threadid, $forumid, $foruminfo, $subject, $from_name, $from_email, $date, $parentid);

Replace both with:

					$postid = insert_post($threadid, $forumid, $foruminfo, $subject, $from_name, $userid, $from_email, $date, $parentid);

In functions_nntp.php, look for:

function insert_post($threadid, $forumid, $foruminfo, $subject, $from_name, $from_email, $date, $parentid = 0)

Replace with:

function insert_post($threadid, $forumid, $foruminfo, $subject, $from_name, $userid, $from_email, $date, $parentid = 0)

Look for:

		'" . stripslashes($from_name) . "', 0, '" . $date . "',

Replace with:

		'" . stripslashes($from_name) . "', " . $userid . ", '" . $date . "',

[John Diver]

Hey,

I'm not getting pictures, can pictures be included in posts? Almost all posts I'm getting have images.

Here is my forum for the posts: http://www.deuceace.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24

It also doesn't seem to be showing much text, am I able to change this or is it a limitation of what I am allowed to take from the sites?