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).

[Gilby]

If you get the webdiscuss.test newgroup to work, then before trying your newsgroups, run this getlastmsg.php script. This will set the lastmsg of the groups in the database and will then make your script only get any new posts from that point on.

[GameCrash]

Whatever I do, it only says "1 group(s) gatewayed." but it does nothing... What I am trying atm is to get microsoft.public.msdn.general from news.microsoft.com. Could you try if it works for you?

[Erwin]

Hi,

I've followed your instructions, uploaded the files from the 1st post, edited my database - everything appears to work, and I get the "1 group(s) gatewayed" message at the end, but the USENET threads are NOT imported in VB for some reason...

I'm not getting any error messages, it's just that the newsgroups threads are not being imported.

Any ideas?

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Erwin Loh
Hi,

I've followed your instructions, uploaded the files from the 1st post, edited my database - everything appears to work, and I get the "1 group(s) gatewayed" message at the end, but the USENET threads are NOT imported in VB for some reason...

I'm not getting any error messages, it's just that the newsgroups threads are not being imported.

Any ideas?

Did the page continue to load after that?

[dost]

This hack works great with public news servers, but when it comes to servers that need authentication, it doesn't seem to work.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by dost
This hack works great with public news servers, but when it comes to servers that need authentication, it doesn't seem to work.

I am using it on a server that requires authentication, and it works fine on that. There was a bug in the script that caused some authentication stuff to not work if the server didn't require authentication and one was set for the default server, then it'd try the one for the default server and fail.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by GameCrash
Whatever I do, it only says "1 group(s) gatewayed." but it does nothing... What I am trying atm is to get microsoft.public.msdn.general from news.microsoft.com. Could you try if it works for you?

It did not work for me. Not even a basic test nntp login script worked for it. I could, however, log in manually to the server, so that puzzles me.

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by Gilby


OK, there was a bug. Since you have the default password and username set, it used those. Please go to the first post inthe thread and get the fixed script and let me know if that works. If that still doesn't work, then upload the nntp.php I posted above that will output the responses and we'll see where we're at.

OK I did this and I can get messages posted to the webdiscuss.tst group now, so I tried to get posted from my own isps newserver at news-text.blueyonder.co.uk

and this is where the problems start, I am gettiing no feedback and it locks up when the status progress bar in ie hits 50% and nothing else occurs, even left it for 10 minutes and it still didnt move.

it requires username and password to getonto the newserver also, so it does the same with or without the user/pass entered.

any ideas ? plus I am using the nntp.php that gives feedback and its not giving anything back either.

EDIT: Also locks up on my other ISPs nntp servr: news.blueyonder.co.uk again with or without user/pass.

yet if I delete the entreies to my own isp and move back to the webdiscuss server it works right away, but if I run it with my isps news servers it wont work just gives me a white screen.

[Gilby]

Originally posted by Sanjiyan
any ideas ? plus I am using the nntp.php that gives feedback and its not giving anything back either.

Here's another nntp.php to try, I narrowed it down to where it was hanging on the microsoft server and this one fixes that, but yet it hangs elsewhere now. But it might work for you.

[Sanjiyan]

Originally posted by Gilby


Here's another nntp.php to try, I narrowed it down to where it was hanging on the microsoft server and this one fixes that, but yet it hangs elsewhere now. But it might work for you.

ok now all I get is this:

<br>
<b>Fatal error</b>: Cannot redeclare logging() in <b>/usr/home/wocsnet/public_html/nntp.php</b> on line <b>328</b><br>

then IE says done, no other feedback..