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).

[rishel]

Because of the content, the content in our ng group doesnt pass away, its always needed. Its automotive based, and there are a wide array of years that people want to search for.

Its a shame really, I was really hoping to bring in a lot more.

[allan grossman]

Ah. I gotcha now.

Did you have any luck trying trying to download fewer headers at once?

[liquidblaze]

I just wanted to sync the NG with my board for the first time on the new host and got this:

Invalid SQL: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.attachmentid,post.pagetext,post.showsignatu re,post.ipaddress,thread.title,post.threadid,threa d.forumid,thread.msgid,thread.prefix FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND (thread.forumid=25)
mysql error:

mysql error number: 0

any ideas what I could do?

[liquidblaze]

I found the problem. had to re-run
ALTER TABLE thread ADD prefix varchar (24);
to get the sync working again - it was a problem with an importing script i had. thanks for this great hack man

[KevinM]

I am attempting to put this into a clean vb3 board.

I am using the gateway script adapted by lierduh, with the rest being from Gilby's original.

I get the following error when running gateway.php for the first time:

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.0 Beta 7:

Invalid SQL: SELECT post.postid,post.username,post.userid,post.datelin e,post.attachmentid,post.pagetext,post.showsignatu re,post.ipaddress,thread.pollid,thread.title,post. threadid,thread.forumid FROM thread,post WHERE post.isusenetpost=0 AND thread.threadid=post.threadid AND post.dateline=thread.dateline AND post.userid=thread.postuserid AND (thread.forumid=2) mysql error: Unknown column 'post.attachmentid' in 'field list'

mysql error number: 1054

Any ideas?

[jarvis]

All,

I have had this hack running on/off for over a year now. One of the big things that keeps me from consistently using it is the search feature and new posts count when a user logs in.

Anyways, I have fixed the search feature to discriminate between Usenet and normal forum posts but have not yet figured out how to disciminate between the new posts counter to exclude the two types of posts.

Rambling, I know, but I would like to see two numbers versus one large.

Anyways, I am by no means a php coder. I am horrible in coding, but I did figure it should be pretty easy to exclude a forumid from the $newposts routine?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by KevinM

I am attempting to put this into a clean vb3 board.

I am using the gateway script adapted by lierduh, with the rest being from Gilby's original.

I get the following error when running gateway.php for the first time:



Any ideas?

Are you sure you are using gatewas.php patched by me?

attachmentid is not in any of the SELECT queries in my gateway.php. However, I did find a typo in one of the SQL statement regarding attachment, which does not give errors like the one you have anyway. I have uploaded the fixed gateway.php. Please grab the new one if you want to try it out.

[csimo]

I'm not trying to cross any lines here, but does this work with vb3? If so it would be a lifesaver for me. Instructions? Info?

Thanks!

[nkouts]

Originally Posted by jarvis

All,

I have had this hack running on/off for over a year now. One of the big things that keeps me from consistently using it is the search feature and new posts count when a user logs in.

Anyways, I have fixed the search feature to discriminate between Usenet and normal forum posts but have not yet figured out how to disciminate between the new posts counter to exclude the two types of posts.

Rambling, I know, but I would like to see two numbers versus one large.

Anyways, I am by no means a php coder. I am horrible in coding, but I did figure it should be pretty easy to exclude a forumid from the $newposts routine?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

csimo - would love to know as well

[Gardener]

lierduh,

Great work on this hack. I had it up and running on the beta release. Then I upgraded to gamma and reinstalled the hack and the latest gateway.php file you have and this is the error I'm getting:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: convert_url_to_bbcode() in \www\vb3\gateway.php on line 181