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).

[Host Visions]

If anyone could install this on my vb3 system, i would gladly pay! I only need a few usenet newsgroups implemented. If you want to take this on, PM me here please.

[mirdin]

I would like to try this, where can I get the latest version recommended for VB3?

[Sanjiyan]

same here, I have used this hack since it came out, infact I think I was amoung the first people to use it.

But I too would like it to be released as a vB 3.0.0 hack, and not use a hack of a hack of a hack, as to which it seems at the moment.

As for additions, I'd like to see the new version (should one be released) to have a the admin CP options come with the hack, not be a addon part

And also ways of using a filter ie to remove words et al from subject headers, that user used in maillint lists (eg. [FFML], [yourmaillistname]) items, and also get it to not post RE: posts from mailing lists. but maybe thats just wishful thinking

[chas_h]

Originally Posted by Sanjiyan

same here, I have used this hack since it came out, infact I think I was amoung the first people to use it.

But I too would like it to be released as a vB 3.0.0 hack, and not use a hack of a hack of a hack, as to which it seems at the moment.

As for additions, I'd like to see the new version (should one be released) to have a the admin CP options come with the hack, not be a addon part

And also ways of using a filter ie to remove words et al from subject headers, that user used in maillint lists (eg. [FFML], [yourmaillistname]) items, and also get it to not post RE: posts from mailing lists. but maybe thats just wishful thinking

Yeah, right now it's a 'hack of a hack' for sure. I am in the process of trying to get the mail list function working on a VB-2 test board in hopes that I will be able to learn enough from that to get it working fully on my VB-3 boards (which I haven't been able to do yet).
This hack desperately needs someone with PHP experience to bring all the parts together and update them for VB-3 and then to write some documentation that is unified (not parts of two people's work). I would be willing to help with the documentaton/instructions but I have no PHP experience.

Chas.

[mirdin]

Originally Posted by chas_h

Yeah, right now it's a 'hack of a hack' for sure. I am in the process of trying to get the mail list function working on a VB-2 test board in hopes that I will be able to learn enough from that to get it working fully on my VB-3 boards (which I haven't been able to do yet).
This hack desperately needs someone with PHP experience to bring all the parts together and update them for VB-3 and then to write some documentation that is unified (not parts of two people's work). I would be willing to help with the documentaton/instructions but I have no PHP experience.

Chas.

I would help if I could, but I'm just new to Vbulletin. I am surprised that there seems so little interest in such a great feature.
Maybe it's a good idea to post it in the "modification requests" forum?

[himerus]

Originally Posted by himerus

Now I've found that I'm actually having a problem with posting when the script is running under a cron...

If I run it manually, the posts that are made in my forum are being sent properly...

If the script runs on a cron and tries to post, it is recieving a 240 status after the post is sent, but the message id isn't being inserted into the post field property... it only appears as something like <himerus.0@> and doesn't have the settings domain or message id included in it... in those cases, the messages aren't being sent properly to the server....

If I manually edit phpmyadmin, and remove the msgid, ref, and reset the isusenetpost to 0, and then manually run the gateway.php file, the post is uploaded properly....

Any ideas???

I will have to create an email message for each time the cron is ran to really test this I think... since I'm not seeing any of the output, but it is saying the post was sent properly...

I'm still having the same problem, and I can't figure out what the #$@#$ is causing it... Again, I have it set up as a vB cron, and if I use the "RUN NOW" button from the Scheduled Task Manager, the new posts are successfully sent without a hitch... but if I let it run as a cron, the $settings variables aren't showing up... when the row in the post table is updated, the

PHP Code:

$msgid = $u . '.' . base_convert ($msgid_date, 10, 36) . '@'. $settings[email]; 


ends up looking like: himerus.0@

Even the simple $settings[email] variable isn't showing up when it's running as a cron...

ANY IDEAS Would be appreciated...

I have lots of users registering specifically for the USENET access, and not having the posts work right on the cron is turning into a large problem.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by himerus

Even the simple $settings[email] variable isn't showing up when it's running as a cron...

Since you know php, that should not be difficult to debug.

The first thing the script does is retrieving the settings from the db. Now you only need to find out why the settings are not available. Come on, you have not tried hard.

Sorry, I don't use vb's schedules. I use cron from the crontab. Once you discover the reason, please post here. Others might like to know the reason.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Ive made an official request for a vB3 NNTP Usenet Gateway Hack/Mod here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=63868

Originally Posted by Sanjiyan

same here, I have used this hack since it came out, infact I think I was amoung the first people to use it.
But I too would like it to be released as a vB 3.0.0 hack, and not use a hack of a hack of a hack, as to which it seems at the moment.
As for additions, I'd like to see the new version (should one be released) to have a the admin CP options come with the hack, not be a addon part
And also ways of using a filter ie to remove words et al from subject headers, that user used in maillint lists (eg. [FFML], [yourmaillistname]) items, and also get it to not post RE: posts from mailing lists. but maybe thats just wishful thinking

Originally Posted by chas_h

Yeah, right now it's a 'hack of a hack' for sure. I am in the process of trying to get the mail list function working on a VB-2 test board in hopes that I will be able to learn enough from that to get it working fully on my VB-3 boards (which I haven't been able to do yet).
This hack desperately needs someone with PHP experience to bring all the parts together and update them for VB-3 and then to write some documentation that is unified (not parts of two people's work). I would be willing to help with the documentaton/instructions but I have no PHP experience.
Chas.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

Any progress on an official NNTP Gateway for vb3 ?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=63868

[chas_h]

Originally Posted by Bro_Joey_Gowdy

Any progress on an official NNTP Gateway for vb3 ?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=63868

I've got it working at my photo site HERE but it was a pain to set up compared to the VB-2 hack which has an admin hack that adds a place in the admincp to manage news groups.
With the Vb-3 hack you have to edit your MySql tables through PHPMyadmin (a gui for Mysql) and it's also a real pain to get the cron thing to work so that it grabs messages from the Usenet every few minutes.
Once set up it works pretty well, it gets messages from the groups and you can post at the forum and it will eventually make it to the newsgroup on the Usenet.
If anyone needs a hand with the cron thing, let me know.

Chas.