NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists

The latest version: V2.3.2 (31 Oct 2004)

What is it?

This hack provides a gateway from vBulletin forums to the USENET. It allows forum members to read newsgroup messages as well as to send posts to the newsgroups. In a nutshell, it turns vBulletin forums into a basic function news reader.

For an added bonus, this package also supports mailing list archive and forum to mailing list gateway. The software retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import them into the forums threaded. It also allows a forums user to send messages to the mailing list by the forum posting interface.

Why?

The gateway will be appreciated by forum members who do not know how to set up a news reader, or people who do not have port 119 open in their network. A forum interface to read and post news are often considered to be better than a news reader.

The gateway adds more contents to your forums and allows the members to interact with wider audience. It is common to see new users signing up to use this feature.

History

This hack is basically a hacked vB2 NNTP gateway written by Gilby to work with vB3. The original hack can be found here:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...7&page=1&pp=15


Features

Some of the features and improvement include:

• Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists.
• Handles MIME encoded messages and attachment.
• Handles UUEncoded messages.
• Two Admin Control Panels for all settings.
• Automated installation.
• Correct thread implementation. All imported messages and posts sent to newsgroups will be threaded correctly according to References and Message-ID headers.
• Optional setting to thread by subject for mailing lists that strip references header.
• Supports TABLE_PREFIX.
• Imported messages will be searchable just like normal forum posts.
• Similar threads are built when the messages are imported if the system setting is on.
• Multiple attachments importing.
• Save attachment to database or file according to vB setting.
• Thumbnail created while importing image files.
• Multiple attachment post to newsgroup is also supported.
• Selectable X-No-Archive header honouring system.
• Light on system resources.
• Global Killfile to filter out unwanted messages. Killfiles can have OR and AND effectiveness.
• Strip footer by setting for incoming messages. Strips out repeated message footers.
• Built options to disable signatures and footers for out going messages.

Future development

• AdminCP interfaces. (completed)
• Installation/upgrade script. (completed, coded into AdminCP)
• Traditional "> " lead posting interface.

What do you need and do not need?

You do not need to edit vB php files if you use two bookmarks
You need to edit one vB php file to insert two lines of code if you want direct click links within AdminCP.
No need to run SQL.

Installation

Basically the AdminCP interfaces take care of installation as well as upgrade in the background. Back up your database first. The scripts can modify your database without alerting you!

Please follow the instructions in the readme.txt file for more details.

Support

Please post your support questions to this thread. Please check the FAQ in the third post within this thread first.

================== UPDATES ======================
Jul 31 2004 (release version 2.2.0)

• Provided option of not importing attachments
• Provided option of pause between messages
• Provided option of not sending messages to USENET
• Provided mechanism to skip importing a message if it was crashed on it
• Provided "Default Footer" option
• Provided strip_footer function for mailing lists
  (written originally by KevinM)
• Provided Killfile functions with Header/Body/AND/OR settings
• Provided ability to thread messages by subject for mailing lists
• Provided ability to use a single POP3 account for different mailing lists
  (use prefix)
• Merged KevinM's attachment routine, save thumbnail to hard drive
  as vB3.0.3
• Official support to have the script run by Scheduled Tasks
• Many bug fixes

Please note, when you manually run the script, you must turn on the debug mode. Otherwise nothing will be displayed on the screen.

To run as debug mode: http://forums.yourdomain.com/gateway.php?debug=1

25 Oct 2004

• Provided the option of sending posts using the real email address
• Provided the option of sending posts using a fixed email address for
  each group.
• Posts are now held back if they are in the moderating queue
• Scheduled task log is now working
• Provided the option of sending the debug messages to the vB3 cron log
• Bug fixes

31 Oct 2004

Fixed bugs running the gateway by the vB3 Scheduled Tasks

1 March 2004

Uploaded the new zip file. It contains one or two bug fixes.

[The Prince]

Originally Posted by The Prince

Hi all,

I'm having problems getting my website hosted with a gateway hack. Can anyone point me towards a host that you use and that lets you use a gateway?

thanks

anyone?

I really need a host...

[James T Brock]

What kind of problems are you having, have you tested the script yet? Do you need a host that has NNTP newsgroups on it, or just one that allows access to port 119 and you'll use your own news server?

[SaN-DeeP]

Originally Posted by James T Brock

What kind of problems are you having, have you tested the script yet? Do you need a host that has NNTP newsgroups on it, or just one that allows access to port 119 and you'll use your own news server?

Hello James, i am using the free services from microsoft news server now,
i want to however add alt.comp.hardware newgroup to my forums too, can you recommend me what free server can i use for same ?

Regards,

[James T Brock]

I'm using giganews for my PC's newsreader as well as for this gateway, and I love it. But I also have an account at http://individual.net, which is free. You have to register on their site and wait a few days for them to activate your account.

[The Prince]

Originally Posted by James T Brock

What kind of problems are you having, have you tested the script yet? Do you need a host that has NNTP newsgroups on it, or just one that allows access to port 119 and you'll use your own news server?

I have a giganews account. And it works fine. I have tested the script and everything seemed ok, but now my host tells me having a gateway like mine opens up security issues and they don't want me to run it anymore. Also, the cron job is too much juice.

So, I need a place where they will allow me to do a cron job and that is ok with the gateway.

I can use my giganews account. But if my new host had a newsserver and would save me the GGN fees, I'd sure go for it, but it's not necessary.

thanks

[Marv]

Hi lierduh,

your hack is very dependable. Since the first release of you hack I noticed for some reasons the gateway isn?t exporting new threads in the forums into the newsgroups. I never found out why this was happening and in a post a few threadsites ago someone mentioned that too.

While bug tracing today I found something that I?ve never noticed before. I guess because I never run the gateway.php through the admincp/cronadmin.php. I always run the gateway as ?debug=1 in a seperate browser window, even if I had set the cronadmin.php to do this job. I only wanted to see the results time by time.

First I got to say that my host is running php as a module under cgi. So my account is restricted by various limitations through that.
My installed version of your hack is 2.3.1 (gateway.php,v 1.40 2004/10/26 14:53:00) modified with your posted additional bugfixes.

As said before, I struggled with the problem that some posts made in the forums doesn?t became exported to the newsgroups. They just never showed up there. I couldn?t figure out why this happend and I couldn?t see or find conditions, which caused this.
Everytime someone informed me about not exported posts, I posted a testpost in my forums and exported this one to the ng through the link http://www.myforums.com/forum/gateway.php?debug=1 - and it worked just perfect. So I never found out what the heck was going on.

Today I noticed that various posts haven?t been exported to the ng again. So I posted some testpost in the forums. But this time - dunno why - I went back to the admincp and run the gateway through the cronjob in admincp/cronadmin.php - and whooops..what?s that ?! I had to recognize that something was going terrible wrong with that:

Warning: main(./gateway.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /xxx/xxx/xxx/htdocs/forum/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 56

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './gateway.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /xxx/xxx/xxx/htdocs/forum/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 56

None of the new posts became exported to the ng - but posts from the ng became imported to the forum. So at least something seemed to happen in the background. Even if I don?t know what exactly.
At first glance I thought I could have uploaded gatway.php to the wrong DIR, uploaded 2 different gateway.php?s to 2 different DIR?s or/and had set the paths incorrect, double-checked everything, but all params were set correctly and gateway.php only exists in the DIR /forum/.

I wrote another testpost and tried to export this one the way I did it the last weeks through a single browser window and the adress http://www.myforums.com/forum/gateway.php?debug=1. Again, that worked perfect, imported and exported all posts absolutly reliable.

After that I thought give it a try and changed the admincron-param from ?./gateway.php? to ?./gateway.php?debug=1?. But that only leads to another error-msg:

Warning: main(./gateway.php?debug=1): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /xxx/xxx/xxx/htdocs/forum/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 56

Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required './gateway.php?debug=1' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /xxx/xxx/xxx/htdocs/forum/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 56

This time the gateway went on strike and im- or exported nothing.

I changed the admincron-param again to the full http adress ?http://www.myforums.com/forum/gateway.php?. With this the gateway seems to work fine and is exporting the new posts from the forums to the ng. It?s running now about an hour and it seems to be dependable and stable. I stress seems cause I thought this a few times before

But..I would like to know wether anyone could confirm this for his/her forums or am I the only one having this problem ?

[Marv]

lierduh,

may be you could do us a favor.

When using a local newsreader and replying to a post, quotes are marked with :

In article news:[msg-ID@msg-ID-host.com] ?My Name? <my@email.com> wrote:

Could you add something like that to your hack ? Would be great - thanks !

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Marv

Hi lierduh,

After that I thought give it a try and changed the admincron-param from ?./gateway.php? to ?./gateway.php?debug=1?. But that only leads to another error-msg:

You should enter "gateway.php" instead of "./gateway.php".

[Marv]

Originally Posted by lierduh

You should enter "gateway.php" instead of "./gateway.php".

You?re funny, lierduh - don?t you think I?ve already tried this before
Since my first installation of your hack the param `gateway.php` isn?t working for me. With this I only receive a blank page in admincp and gateway.php is doing nothing. Wether importing nor exporting.

[James T Brock]

Originally Posted by Marv

I changed the admincron-param again to the full http adress ?http://www.myforums.com/forum/gateway.php?. With this the gateway seems to work fine and is exporting the new posts from the forums to the ng. It?s running now about an hour and it seems to be dependable and stable. I stress seems cause I thought this a few times before

But..I would like to know wether anyone could confirm this for his/her forums or am I the only one having this problem ?

I was having the exact same problem. Posts were coming into the forums fine but no post were being exported to usenet unless I manually went to the gateway myself. After a lot of frustration I deleted the usenet schedued tasks (all five of them) from the forums adminCP and decided to try one last idea. I decided to set REAL cronjobs to run the gateway instead of using vB's built in functionality. I set the cronjob to run 'http://www.myforums.com/forums/gateway.php' and now it works perfectly. For anyone else who is recieving posts but none of your post are being sent to usenet, maybe this will work for you as well?

Now that it works... Lierduh, this is a great hack. For me and my forums, this is the most useful vb mod on this site. Thanks for all of your work on it and I hope you keep updating this thing!