[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

[interrealm]

Just checking in on the status of the new version? that won't require all the perl mod's.

[Tim Wheatley]

Still wondering when a nice shiny and new 2.2.1 version may turn up?

[Frank]

2.2.2 now

[Tim Wheatley]

Yeah -- what he said.

[Mark Hewitt]

So this definitely does not work on vbulletin 2.2.1/2 then?

I agree a totally PHP version of the script would be great. As the reason I had to remove the newsgroups was that I moved server and couldn't do all the Perl module installation etc.

I had originally planned the newsgroup part of my site to be off for about 2 weeks, now 6 months later my members have forgotten about it completely!

(So just as long as it doesn't require modifying PHP!).

[WildWayz]

Originally posted by Mark Hewitt
So this definitely does not work on vbulletin 2.2.1/2 then?

I agree a totally PHP version of the script would be great. As the reason I had to remove the newsgroups was that I moved server and couldn't do all the Perl module installation etc.

I had originally planned the newsgroup part of my site to be off for about 2 weeks, now 6 months later my members have forgotten about it completely!

(So just as long as it doesn't require modifying PHP!).

its a bit iffy when using 2.2.1 - basically, it can spool in the posts, but it is hit and miss whether replies/new posts to it via the forums go through or not.

Also, it stops picking up posts from usenet if I use the same name to post as my forum name.

--James

[Mark Hewitt]

OK. Can we contact vb.org people to get the tag for this changed to vb2.0.3 then. And then when (if) a 2.2.2 version comes out a new thread can be started.

[Erwin]

A PHP version would be an EXCELLENT idea. I waith with anticipation...

[Dontom]

Hi,
i installed all neccessary modules, but perl wont find them, do i have to reboot before??

this is what i get:
Can't locate News/NNTPClient.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl .) at ./newnews.pl line 42.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./newnews.pl line 42.

I am running perl 5.6.1 - so where would I change the @INC??
Thank you very much!
Tom

[Tim Wheatley]

That means that the NNTPClient perl module isn't installed in the perl dir (doesn't it?)