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.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Dio

I changed it from 1 to 0. After making the changes I went and looked in the header of one of my posts. It listed the organization as:

Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 100,000+ UNCENSORED Newsgroups.

So it is not showing up as my site. Is there another way around this, or will the NNTP hack know/identify that this is coming from my site?

The server changes your organization header and inserts advertising, That is the reason why your own posts get imported. You usually should be safe to set it to 0. Are you sure the setting was 0 before your own posts got imported?

[Dio]

Originally Posted by lierduh

The server changes your organization header and inserts advertising, That is the reason why your own posts get imported. You usually should be safe to set it to 0. Are you sure the setting was 0 before your own posts got imported?

I set it to 0 after your suggestion. It appears that the solution you provided worked. Thank you very much for you help.

[krohnathlonman]

How about some kind of keyword filter so that if the thread has certain words in it the thread will not get posted. something like that would help the fight against spam.

Also a way to break the posting into a seperate process from the import will help the larger systems out quite a bit.

[journey]

I have the script up and running on a new vB3.03 install. It seems as though when I d/l posts/threads (from usenet) that my overall post/thread count statistics increment at a 2:1 ratio (the main forums view stats to the right of the individual forums seem normal though). ie, if I were to have downloaded 10k posts my overall post stats would read 20k. Why would posts / threads be double counted in the overall stats (but not on the individual stats)?

This happened both when I initially downloaded threads as well as everytime I d/l additonal posts when the cron job runs.

oh yeah, and non-usenet forums that are strictly local do correctly update the overall and forum specific post/thread count at a 1:1 ratio.

irate:

[James T Brock]

Originally Posted by kkiely

2. I use giganews but they told me that the news feed is for personal use only. Is there anyone here who knows of any news feeds that are commerical.

Just use Giganews, plenty of us are using it for this purpose and it works fine! If you want to use something else than just do a google search for news providers, pretty much any good one is fine to use for the purpose of proving usenet on your forums.

Originally Posted by kkiely

3. I had someone post spam onto USENET through my site. Previously I wasn't moderating the posts to USENET but now I am. Is there any other way to make sure people don't spam - other than moderating the posts that get sent to USENET?

People who spam your usenet forums should be treated the same as people who spam any other section of your site. Just ban them, how you decipline your users have nothing to do with this script.

[journey]

Originally Posted by journey

I have the script up and running on a new vB3.03 install. It seems as though when I d/l posts/threads (from usenet) that my overall post/thread count statistics increment at a 2:1 ratio (the main forums view stats to the right of the individual forums seem normal though). ie, if I were to have downloaded 10k posts my overall post stats would read 20k. Why would posts / threads be double counted in the overall stats (but not on the individual stats)?

This happened both when I initially downloaded threads as well as everytime I d/l additonal posts when the cron job runs.

oh yeah, and non-usenet forums that are strictly local do correctly update the overall and forum specific post/thread count at a 1:1 ratio.

irate:

bump.

[journey]

Also, I was wondering how we can make posts from the usenet say something other than "guest". I saw on one other site they list the posts as being from "usenet poster".

[James T Brock]

Go into your admin panel and check the usergroup manager. Edit the usergroup for guests and change the name to whatever you want.

[Zach]

I just thought of this - but setting the sender as

abuse@localhost

might be kind of funny - some of the idiot spammers would collect that address - and start sending spam to the abuse account on their server

[w0z]

Sowwy my n00b question, but is anyone using this Hack in vB 3.0.4 ?

I have this currently installed on my production vB 3.0.3, is there anything I should pay attention when I upgrade vB to 3.0.4, do I have to do any additional steps after upgrading to ensure this Hack will continue to work? O_o

Cheers,
w0z