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.

[Torqued]

I thought maybe I screwed up something on the install, so I reinstalled.

"which php" shows my php path to be:

/usr/local/bin/php

When I try to run the gateway.php via cron w/ the command of:

/usr/local/bin/php /home/<username>/public_html/forums/gateway.php

I get the following error message:

"nntp.php and mime.php files need to be in the './includes/' directory"

The nntp.php and mime.php files are in the ./includes directory. My gateway.php is in my /forums directory.

I can get it to run via the vB task scheduler. Are there any advantages/disadvantages w/ vB Task Scheduler vs cron? Does it matter?

[trackpads]

Originally Posted by AWS

The command should be.

php -q /path/to/gateway.php

On my server for some reason I could never run a php script in the cron. What I use is this, maybe it can help you:

lynx -dump http://www.trackpads.com/forum/gateway.php

[jcrash]

Two questions:

#1) Has anyone noticed an increase in the number of threads not being found and instead having new threads created? Im getting a LOT of these. It started prior to my install of the latest scripts and seems to be continuing

#2) I installed the latest scripts and it seems to run slower. Anyone notice that?

[ryee]

First of all, great job and I appreciate all of the work that has gone into this hack.
When I run the gateway.php, I get the following:
<snip>
Gateway version 2.3.2 2 group(s) gatewayed.
Could not connect to NNTP-server. (Connection timed out (110))

Not connected
Not connected
Could not connect to NNTP-server. (Connection timed out (110))

Not connected
Not connected

</snip>

I checked with my hosting provider and port 119 is being blocked for outgoing and incoming traffic. The output seems to validate that fact. I read on some other posts about using another port. How can I configure the newsreader to use a port other than 119 to connect to the new server. I'm not sure if my news hosting provider (newsgroups.com even supports ports other than 119.

Thanks,

[Torqued]

Originally Posted by trackpads

On my server for some reason I could never run a php script in the cron. What I use is this, maybe it can help you:

lynx -dump http://www.trackpads.com/forum/gateway.php

crap. my host has wget and lynx disabled right now..

Anyone else out there that has had problems w/ getting the cron working but finally figured it out?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by ryee

I checked with my hosting provider and port 119 is being blocked for outgoing and incoming traffic. The output seems to validate that fact. I read on some other posts about using another port. How can I configure the newsreader to use a port other than 119 to connect to the new server. I'm not sure if my news hosting provider (newsgroups.com even supports ports other than 119.

Thanks,

Some commercial provider let you access the NNTP server via port 80 for instance. All you need to do is search for 119 in the gateway.php file, and replace it with 80.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by jarvis

Okay, so I've been trying to read all 44 pages.

I used this hack in vb2 for a while, but then stopped using it because the "Find New Posts" became very bothersome for users when there were 1000's of new usenet posts showing in their search.

It looks as if some have found a way around this? I'd love to install this again and open up Usenet for my users.

Thanks much in advance!!

See the end of the readme file.

[Neobud]

Hello all. I'm a new user and think this hack is completely awesome. Been running the Usenet component for a few days for testing without dramas. For those on a Windows platform who lack the functionality offered by Cron (and are not happy with Win Task Scheduler), I have been using nnCron and can recommend it for achieving the same.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Neobud

I've done a number of searches and failed to find an answer to my question... I can't get the Mail List component to work. I was hoping somebody could confirm the correct configuration in pop.php (copied below). Is there any other code that needs to be modified?

There is no need to edit php files. Just follow the readme file to setup.

[Beermonster]

How would I stop this increasing the forum post count?