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).

[jcrash]

Well, I have found a something...it posts the first message to USENET in a thread if I post a thread in my forum, but not subsequent ones.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by Ogmuk

Great work on this hack guys! It worked on the first attempt although it does want to download a text file here too. Is there an easy way to stop this behaviour with IE6?

I'm not sure I understand this. It shouldn't be trying to download anything from here.

2 other questions:
The imported content isn't searchable yet, is it?

It sure is

My users don't like searching Usenet forums from a regular forum search, though. The way mine's set up, navbar searches for *new* posts don't include Usenet but regular and advanced searches do.

I haven't tried to actually create a post in the newgroup yet so I have no idea if this feature is already in, but is it possible to add a little signature to posts from my board? for example, "this message has been posted through www.mysite.com"?

It's already in there. Take a look at gateway.php and you'll see the signature routine. Mine are disabled for Usenet but the feature works just fine.

Edit: another question about a little detail I noticed. I see that the amount of thread views by default equals the amount of posts in one thread. Is there an easy way to put these on 0 by default?

Not that I know of - it'd be fairly simple to do with a query, though.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by jcrash

Well, I have found a something...it posts the first message to USENET in a thread if I post a thread in my forum, but not subsequent ones.

jcrash, look at post #351 on page 24 of this thread. There's a version of nntp.php that does verbose output - you should be able to troubleshoot from there. Maybe it'll tell you where the problem is.

[Ogmuk]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

I'm not sure I understand this. It shouldn't be trying to download anything from here.

There was already someone with the same problem:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...945#post451945

Thanks for the info, it's very useful For some reason the content of the posts I imported aren't searchable yet but this may be related to the fact I didn't let it finish the import because of the browser's behavior.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by stroke25

it already puts the user name there.It wouldnt be a real addy.Just need to figure out how to remove the numbers/letters.

KGB.11g8ob@pokerhelper.com KGB is the user name for this one.It puts the period also.

stroke, maybe you could think about this one for a bit before you implement it.

Posting to Usenet with a real email address will dramatically increase the amount of spam your users receive - and maybe your users won't be quite so grateful ;-)

I run my own mail server and the spam problem got bad enough that I finally altered the script to goober up the *domain* name instead of the username.

I have about five regular Usenet posters - and about three months after I installed the gateway the amount of spam my mail server received more than doubled. Spoofing the domain name instead of the username solved that problem.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by Ogmuk

There was already someone with the same problem:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...945#post451945

Thanks for the info, it's very useful For some reason the content of the posts I imported aren't searchable yet but this may be related that I didn't let it finish the import because of the browser's behavior.

Ah. I gotcha now

I'm not sure whether this is a browser or a webserver problem. The browser clearly knows what to do with php content or the user couldn't read or post here. Maybe gateway.php was uploaded as binary instead of ASCII? I'm just guessing, though

Contents of your Usenet forums should be searchable - you can look at my forum if you like. You should be able to search as an unregistered user -

http://ebassist.com

cheers -

[Ogmuk]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

I have about five regular Usenet posters - and about three months after I installed the gateway the amount of spam my mail server received more than doubled. Spoofing the domain name instead of the username solved that problem.

Cool info there. I'm still somewhat holding back on testing this gateway thing first before applying it to my live forum. So is this domain spoofing thing is being done by default?

Maybe gateway.php was uploaded as binary instead of ASCII? I'm just guessing, though

I uploaded it through SCP. I don't think that there's a problem with the file itself since it is importing, but it tries to make me download the file's output or something.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by Ogmuk

Cool info there. I'm still somewhat holding back on testing this gateway thing first before applying it to my live forum. So is this domain spoofing thing is being done by default?

No - by default it spoofs the *username* but leaves the domain name intact.

I uploaded it through SCP. I don't think that there's a problem with the file itself since it is importing, but it tries to make me download the result or something.

That's kinda strange. I guess I'd look at browser settings, then.

[Ogmuk]

I assume so too. I'm installing lynx on my box so it won't matter all that much. Sorry for the newbie question but which changes do I have to make to spoof the domain name instead?

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by Ogmuk

I assume so too. I'm installing lynx on my box so it won't matter all that much. Sorry for the newbie question but which changes do I have to make to spoof the domain name instead?

Don't worry about it - the only dumb question is an unasked one

This one I might have to give you when I get home - I can't run phpmyadmin on my work network, but I believe I spoofed the domain name in the database itself.