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).

[PhoenixBB]

Is anyone using this with V3, and if so does the threading feature work properly? Not only for incoming posts but when posting out it puts the posts on the correct thread in the NG ?

The threading feature is about the only reason I would think of getting VB3. At the moment I'm loathe to switch on posting because from what I could gather it tends to post to the first post and newsgroups can get quite snotty about that. Especially the one I use! There are already hostile camps and if my guys don't post in the correct order, all hell would break loose. VB3 would solve that if the threading feature does what it ought.

[lierduh]

08-19-03 at 03:39 AM saab340 said this in Post #600
I receive this error from cron e-mail... and its killing the server after it gets in the loop.... it used to work fine, what is going on, and how could I fix this....

One thing to watch out. Don't put the cron job in place until you import all the messages. The last message counter only gets updated after all the messages are received. If by then the cron job starts another message retrieving, the server can be brought down after a few processes trying to add the same messages to the forum database.

[NuclioN]

Looks like a great hack. However...tried a few newsgroups but there is no connection possible. Maybe i'm doing something wrong or the server is giving problems.

1 group(s) gatewayed.
Could not connect to NNTP-serverLogging in to alt.binaries.nl, group alt.binaries.nl
Not connectedNot connected

Is it true that IMAP must be installed on the server?

[PhoenixBB]

Okay I've finally switched on the posting feature, but it's making a hell of a mess of the newsgroup. Aside from the top posting issue, it keeps posting with an extra 'Re:'. So some replies are like 'Re: Re: Re: Re: blah blah'.

This not only looks hideous in the newsgroup but it makes a mess of my forum because they end up on separate threads. I can't merge with the originals else any replies will go to the wrong part of the thread.

It's actually not giving a good impression of our forum because anyone who posts from my board will by necessity be 'top posting' which annoys everyone, and have the multiple 'Re' in the subject lines, which enrages them further.

Does anyone know how to fix this? The hack would be fine without this issue, but as it's such a major flaw I can't see how I can allow posting if it isn't sorted.

I was considering Fastfowards hack, because his seemed to thread correctly on the NG, but my host isn't keen on a perl script. As I'm on a shared server and have no problems with this hack (apart from this issue) then Gilby's it is.

I did notice that Fasforward had optional code for the New Thread and New Reply which ensured the correct threading. This was basically inserting 'nntp dateline' in one of the DB>insert sections. Does Gilby's hack use the nntp dateline? Had a read thru both files and can't see it. Does it use a different name? Usenet dateline or something? In other words could I adapt that bit of code ala Fastforwards version so that posts will go to the correct part of the thread (and hopefully not have the multiple 'Re:')

Any suggestions or solutions? Anyone?

Muchos Gracias.

[lierduh]

I have a hack for this hack a few posts back regarding the thread sorting problem. Usenet readers sort them by References and Message-IDs in the header. Not by date/time.

[PhoenixBB]

Do you mean this one: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...996#post420996

I thought that was just for sorting out problems with incoming threading. For the most part VB threads ok, and any 'strays' I merge. I do sometimes get a 're: re: re:' which ends up on a different thread, but I can live with that. What I want to ensure is that when replying to a post in the middle of a thread it will actually go to the correct part of the thread on Usenet, and not 'top post'. And hopefully, not end up adding an extra 're:' to each reply. Are you saying that the above hack will fix those problems? <keeps all fingers and toes crossed>

Phoenix

[SRozhon]

Can someone tell me what query I need to run to delete the duplicate posts from my newsgroup threads? For example,

Palatines from Germany to England 1709 Now Online joe 0 0 09-05-2003 11:11 AM
by joe

Palatines from Germany to England 1709 Now Online joe 0 0 09-05-2003 11:11 AM
by joe

Palatines from Germany to England 1709 Now Online joe 0 0 09-05-2003 11:11 AM
by joe

I want to keep one of these by not the other two. If I got rid of all of them I could just query

DELETE FROM post WHERE username='name of bad seed'

like Gilby said around page 28. But I want to keep one of them. Any suggestions or advise on this?

[lierduh]

09-07-03 at 01:12 AM PhoenixBB said this in Post #606
Do you mean this one: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...996#post420996

I thought that was just for sorting out problems with incoming threading. For the most part VB threads ok, and any 'strays' I merge. <keeps all fingers and toes crossed>

Phoenix

The hack is for posts generated from the forums. The originally hack (a very good one by the way) did not implement the References in the header properly.

Not sure what do you mean by "top post", I know "top reply".

[MaDCaT75]

If only I was smart enough to install this.....

[csimo]

I'm running VB3. Has anyone tried this on vB3? Will it work, should I try?

Sounds like great work so far!