[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

[VirtueTech]

First of thanks for the new "newnews.pl" script Paul. Works great!

Currently if my users don't fill in my "usenet signature" custom profile field then the system shows their VB signature.

Is this how it is supposed to work?

Shouldn't it only allow the custom profile field "Usenet Signature" so that it doesn't show the messed up VB sig withthe VB code in it?

Please help.

[fastforward]

Unless the user specifies a new signature. The normal one goes out to usenet (as long as you select 'Include user signature on outgoing posts?' in the control panel).

If you also select 'Custom profile field title for usenet signature' in the control panel, then the user will have the opportunity to override their default sig with a new one specific to usenet.

However, in either case, the BBCode should be stripped before being sent to usenet. Is this not the case? If not, I'll look into it.

[VirtueTech]

It might be...however my signature just looks horrible in usenet.

It would be best if the system only allowed the users to send the custom Usenet Signature only. At least for my site it would.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by VirtueTech
It would be best if the system only allowed the users to send the custom Usenet Signature only. At least for my site it would.

I can do that quite easily. I'll try and find time today for you.

[Dontom]

short question:
is there an option not to archive x-archive=no posts?
Thank you!
Tom

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Dontom
short question:
is there an option not to archive x-archive=no posts?
Thank you!
Tom

Sort of. The script already does the necesary checking for x-noarchive, but you need to enable it by making a small edit to newnews.pl.

On or around line 404 find the line that reads:

if (!$spam) {

Change that to:

unless ($spam || $xa) {

After that, all posts with the X-No-Archive header will be rejected.
Note: The X-No-Archive header is not part of RFC977.

[Dontom]

cool, thank you for this fast answer!!
Tom

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Dontom
cool, thank you for this fast answer!!
Tom

One thing I should have mentioned. The messages on the console will show these X-No-archive posts as being rejected because they were spam even though they aren't.
I'll add a CP option for this in the next version.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by VirtueTech
It would be best if the system only allowed the users to send the custom Usenet Signature only. At least for my site it would.

For a quick fix to allow this now, find on or around line 877 that currently reads:

$signature = $thread->{signature};

and change to:

$signature = "";

This will cause a blank signature to be sent to usenet if a custom one is not set.

[VirtueTech]

Hey thanks but line 877 of what script?