[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

This hack can't handle groups with "+" signs in the usenet group name. Any idea how to circumvent this problem? I've tried escaping it with a \, but no luck. I guess I'd need to alter the perl script, although there may be a better way. any ideas?

[fastforward]

Originally posted by andy_C
This hack can't handle groups with "+" signs in the usenet group name. Any idea how to circumvent this problem? I've tried escaping it with a \, but no luck. I guess I'd need to alter the perl script, although there may be a better way. any ideas?

The trick is to add them manually via phpMyAdmin. I have a few groups with a + in them. It just means you can't edit them via the CP. It's on my 'todo' list... near the bottom

Thank you so much fastforward. Although it's difficult to say thanks, I'd like to do it. You've provided a great many of us with a fantastic tool (esp. for marketing etc) and I really appreciate it. I'll check out the "+" thing and hopefully it should work as beautifully as the rest of the script does.

[Dioxin]

one short question:

what does this error message mean:

Processing headers for article 154365... OK
NNTPERROR: 421 No next to retrieve.
Processing headers for article 154366... OK
NNTPERROR: 421 No next to retrieve.
Processing headers for article 154367... OK
...

it appears not often, but occasionally

thanx in advance, dioxin

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Dioxin
one short question:

what does this error message mean:

Processing headers for article 154365... OK
NNTPERROR: 421 No next to retrieve.
Processing headers for article 154366... OK
NNTPERROR: 421 No next to retrieve.
Processing headers for article 154367... OK
...

it appears not often, but occasionally

thanx in advance, dioxin

Basically, it just means the server said it had an article, but it turned out it didn't really have it after all.

The server rarely reports how many articles it has accurately. Nothing to worry about, it doesn't affect the completion of messages or anything.

It actually happens quite often with my news provider. You must have a reliable one. There seems to be no obvious way to supress the warnings I'm afraid.

[DarkReaper]

I'm having problems with your usenet hack. After fixing all the problems with the SQL statements, when I modified newreply, it stopped working. It would still post the thread, and execute the phpinclude, but that was it. Here's the offending line:

$DB_site->query("INSERT INTO post (postid,threadid,title,username,userid,dateline,nn tpdateline,attachmentid,pagete xt,allowsmilie,showsignature,ipaddress,iconid,visi ble,inreplyto) VALUES (NULL,'$threadid','".addslashes(htmlspecialchars($ title))."','".addslashes(htmls pecialchars($postusername))."','$bbuserinfo[userid]','".time()."','".time()."','$attachmentid','".add slashes($message)."','$allowsm ilie','$signature','$ipaddress','$iconid','$visibl e','$inreplyto')");

This could have to do with the above bug, but post counts aren't working either. When I post in a thread, my count stays the same.

[dwh]

I haven't installed the upgrade yet, plan to maybe tonight/tomorrow, but I just noticed that most of the groups are populating but one group is not populating even though using the same newsserver I know there are posts....dunno if the new version fixes this.,

[DarkReaper]

Ok, what the hell is going on here. Even after replacing my newthread and newreply files with the orignal ones from the vB zip, it still doesn't work! It brings up a blank page with only the phpinclude information loading, but when I hit refresh, it works fine?! How can I fix this, what is wrong with it??

[orca]

Just a quick question relating to binaries: If a newspost has a binary included, does the script remove the whole message or does it just remove the binary? For me, it seems that it removes the whole message.

[Dioxin]

thanx for your answer, fastforward

i have another one:

there are still many many threads awaiting for manual post insertion. is this normal? how can i avoid this?

what's the meaning of orphan? i'am a german guy and i don't understand this option in control panel. should i set it to 5 or a higher level.

thanx,

regards, dioxin