NNTP Gateway (Usenet/Newsgroups)

This hack provides a gateway to any NNTP newsgroup such as those from Usenet and other newsgroup servers. Selected newsgroups are imported from your news server and post on the forum are sent out to the newsgroup. This hack was greatly inspired by fastforward's usenet gateway hack. This one is a complete rewrite of that hack written in PHP and works with vB 2.2.2.

Installation:
Installation is pretty simple. No modifications to the vB php files are needed and it simply consists of dropping in the files to your forums directory, running the SQL modifications, and modifying the newsgroup settings for your desired newsgroups. For the complete installation details, read the readme.txt file.

Here are some of the features:

• Real cool vbcode to text conversion!
• All posts are inserted, even if parent thread cannot be found for replies
• Guests posts also get sent to the newsgroup.
• Importing of attachments from the newsgroup
• Poll info sent to newsgroup
• Attachment link sent to newsgroup
• Supports unlimited newsgroups and servers.
• email notification of new replies, just like regular forum posts
• Can import HTML messages and convert to limited vb code.

For control panel integration, please check out GameCrash's Graphical Interface addition.

What's not in it that was in fastforward's usenet gateway hack:

• No control panel integration at the moment. (Available separately)
• Does not support separate footers
• Does not allow custom email address to be used via the users option
• No spam control or string replacement support.
• No purging or autoexpire.

There is still lots that I'd like to add to it, but this is competely functional for basic newsgroup gateway support. It is most likely not free of bugs. If you have questions, suggestions or annoyances, please post in this thread.

vb3 support
lierduh modified this to provide support for the beta versions of vb3. When the release candidates of vb3 come out, I plan to add support for vb3 and add other features to this hack. If you have suggestions for new features, let me know.

E-mail gateway support
New in this version, you can now gateway with an email list. This will fetch emails from a POP email account and send via php's mail function to the mailing list's email address. To set up the list, in the newsgroup field, enter in the email address to send outgoing posts to. In the server field, enter in the pop3 server, and in the username and password fields enter in, you guessed it, the username and password to your pop account. Note: the email gateway capabilities has not been fully tested, so it might not work with your POP server. Also, it does not work in combo with a news<->forum gateway in the same forum (you can use either kind though in differnet forums within your forums).

[groovesalad]

del

[iggy123]

any ideas on how to stop it updating all threads?
I have tried to install this but the newsgroup i want to get threads from has 3 months worth of posts - i only want the last months threads.
everytime i manually prune the forum the next time the gateway.php runs it brings in the old posts again.

[alesis404]

Using older stuff from Usenet hack - you need a new field in thread table.

ALTER TABLE thread ADD isusenetpost TINYINT(2) DEFAULT 0 not null;

then open your gateway.php and find:

// Create thread
$DB_site->query("INSERT INTO thread (threadid,title,lastpost,forumid,open,replycount,p ostusername,postuserid,lastpos
ter,dateline,iconid,visible,attach,msgid,prefix) VALUES (NULL,'".addslashes(htmlspecialchars($subject))."' ,'".$date."','$forumid','1','0','".addslashes(from _name($message[from]))."','0','".addslashes(from_name($message[from]))."','".$date."','0','1','$attachcount','".addsla shes($message[msgid])."','".addslashes($theprefix)."')");

replace it with (changes enbolded)

// Create thread modded
$DB_site->query("INSERT INTO thread (threadid,title,lastpost,forumid,open,replycount,p ostusername,postuserid,lastpos
ter,dateline,iconid,visible,attach,msgid,isusenetp ost,prefix) VALUES (NULL,'".addslashes(htmlspecialchars($subject))."' ,'".$date."','$forumid','1','0','".addslashes(from _name($message[from]))."','0','".addslashes(from_name($message[from]))."','".$date."','0','1','$attachcount','".addsla shes($message[msgid])."','1','".addslashes($theprefix)."')");

From now on each thread created by gateway.php will be flagged as originating from usenet (isusenetpost=1)...

Open search.php and find two lines:

$wheresql.=" AND thread.open<>10";

in my case around line 551 and 601...
Directly below each of them add:

// NNTP Gateway mod
if (!$includeusenetpostsingetnew) { $wheresql.=" AND thread.isusenetpost=0"; };
// End of mod

Having isusenetpost in thread table also allows you to separate threrad counts or create separate links for "View new Usenet posts" ( see example here...

==============================================
Can someone tell me the correct syntax to run this line as a query and create this?

ALTER TABLE thread ADD isusenetpost TINYINT(2) DEFAULT 0 not null;

*I tried creating the table manually but after doing the mod and trying view new posts I got a white screen and suspect maybe the table I have is made wrong, thanks

[PhoenixBB]

I couldn't get that querie to worked - kept giving me a syntax error. The post beneath that one you quoted provided the solution for me.

[kaiwang]

which NNTP service provider is everyone here using??

thanks

[alesis404]

Someone mentioned to remove certain users usenet posts you could do this

A simple SQL query can be used periodically to delete them. Use something like "DELETE FROM post WHERE username='username'" You'll also need to run DELETE FROM thread WHERE postusername='name of bad seed'" Or you can see my last post and add another thing to the if statement.

Using phpmyadmin I am trying to run a sql query and am not sure I am doing this properly and need confimation, is the exact line that needs to be typed

DELETE FROM post WHERE username='username'

of course replacing 'username' with the actual username who's posts you need deleted or is there some other code that must be added before this to the standard query from phpmyadmin? I seem to get a syntax error trying to run that line and assume i am missing a small code snippet that might go in front of that line of the querys?

[alesis404]

Post #334 mentioned to alter the table thread and add

ALTER TABLE thread ADD isusenetpost TINYINT(2) DEFAULT 0 not null;

I did this manually and appears I have the table right but going by the last error I got was I supposed to make another change to mention that extra column?

*I did also make the mod to search.php and appears to be blocking posts from "view new posts but now I have this error"

[allan grossman]

Today at 04:06 PM kaiwang said this in Post #575
which NNTP service provider is everyone here using??

thanks

I'm using Giganews and it's working fine. I also made some changes to the signature routines - because I wanted them to say something different and because the signature separator wasn't RFC 1036-compliant and some newsreaders were having problems strippng them off.

A compliant signature separator is <linefeed><dash><dash><space><linefeed> Gilby's hack (while outstanding) was missing the space and some newsreaders wouldn't strip the signature out of quoted vB Usenet posts.

This hack has added real value to my board - thanks, Gilby!

[PhoenixBB]

which NNTP service provider is everyone here using??

I was going to use my Easynews account, but chickened out when I read the TOS. They were very much ''you must use the account soley for your own use''. Technically it is, but I figured too dicey as I'm in the UK and my site is on a US server, and they might notice I can't be in two continents at once. :P In the end I went with teranews.com who give 50mb a day free, which is plenty for the couple of text groups I use. They charge a one off $3.95, which isn't bad. Had no problems so far.

I'm just gearing up to switch the posting function on. Am a bit nervous of that in case it posts what's already there. I guess I'm gonna have to re-read this whole thread again <whimpers> but am I remembering rightly that people can't use the normal vbcodes when replying? Or if they do they don't get converted like they do on the way in? That'll take some getting used to for some of my members.

[alesis404]

A simple SQL query can be used periodically to delete them. Use something like "DELETE FROM post WHERE username='username'" You'll also need to run DELETE FROM thread WHERE postusername='name of bad seed'" Or you can see my last post and add another thing to the if statement.

Is anybody sucessfully doing this through phpmyadmin and if so what is the exact query you are using? I tried this and it gives me a syntax error on line 1 and I really have alot of posts I would like to remove asap...thanks

DELETE FROM post WHERE username='username' <---this give me bad syntax when i run this query from phpmyadmin? is there something that goes in front or behind this...sorry for asking again but I've been waiting all weekend to be able to remove bulk spam posts and would appreciate help from anybody using phpadmin to run this query and delete posts by user, note I cannot mass prune by user from admincp and when I try it hops to the next page but appears there is buttons missing and I cant perform the action...perhaps others know what I mean....