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).

[Ogmuk]

Originally Posted by jcrash

Any idea why my USENT messages wouldn't be returned very frequently from searches? It seems like only threads that I post on via my forum return in the search window.

It seems that imported posts from Usenet aren't automatically added to the search index, although some of us would like to see that differently

[himerus]

I'd like to see a working example of this on 3.0.0 Gold if someone has it... I think it would add a ton of functionality to my board, but I'd like to see some implementation first.

Thanks!!!

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by leeherron

So no one knows about the changed subject threading bug?

I remember noting that. Before inserting, gateway.php searches for the same subject. It really should insert the post by looking up the reference field.

The original gateway.php does not have reference field, hence it was implemented this way.

One of the TO DO, ie. if no official release comes out soon.

Another thing on the TO DO list is the text wrapping for quoted text. Quoted text is wrapped unnecessary at the moment. "> >"s are added to quoted text pushing the line beyond the 72 characters.

[lierduh]

For people who have problems importing or herhaps search index building, please check your web server's error log. There might be clues in there.

One important setting in php.ini you need to change for vB3 is:

memory_limit = 16M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume

The default memory_limit is 8MB. vB3 will cripple with only 8MB, but only for large queries.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by himerus

I'd like to see a working example of this on 3.0.0 Gold if someone has it... I think it would add a ton of functionality to my board, but I'd like to see some implementation first.

Thanks!!!

I've had it running for awhile - I'm gatewaying four newsgroups. Works fine under vB3 Gold.

http://ebassist.com

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

/me waits patiently for an official usenet gateway release for VB3 Gold

[jcrash]

Originally Posted by lierduh

For people who have problems importing or herhaps search index building, please check your web server's error log. There might be clues in there.

One important setting in php.ini you need to change for vB3 is:


memory_limit = 16M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume

The default memory_limit is 8MB. vB3 will cripple with only 8MB, but only for large queries.

Well, #1, I dont have access to that file, I think...it would be controlled by my host, right?

Secondly, I'm not sure what you mean by search index building. That all happens automatically, right? You can go to my site here and search on the word "party" it is in a TON of the usenet posts and you won't get one hit.

[Ogmuk]

search index building has to be done manually through the control panel as far as i know

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Ogmuk

search index building has to be done manually through the control panel as far as i know

No, I have a routine to do that in the script after the post is imported.

Around line 364, I have:

build_post_index($postid,$foruminfo);

If the script has an error when building the search index, then the search index won't get built. Also if the "similar thread" function is turned on. It uses the fetch_similar_threads function. This function takes a lot of memory in vB3. If you have only 8MB, then that could well be your problem.

Have you checked your error log? what is your memeory_limit setting?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by jcrash

Well, #1, I dont have access to that file, I think...it would be controlled by my host, right?

Secondly, I'm not sure what you mean by search index building. That all happens automatically, right? You can go to my site here and search on the word "party" it is in a TON of the usenet posts and you won't get one hit.

Yes, your host will control the php.ini file. However, the chances are you can use .htaccess in your forums' directory and increase your memory_limit through an entry of: php_flag

If unclear, google .htaccess and php_flag.

Again, have you checked your error log?