[RELEASE] Usenet Gateway for vB 2.01

Description:

This hack provides a gateway to selected usenet groups. The entire usenet group is mirrored locally. Posts submitted locally to mirrored newsgroups will also be sent out to usenet. A single perl script is executed via cron that collects news and posts any outgoing articles. Incoming messages are parsed against customizable spam filters and threaded correctly before being placed in your forums. By default, no personal information is sent to usenet other than the posters username and whatever you have globally configured as a footer and organization. The option does exist for a user to include a custom email to use for usenet posts. After initial installation (which involves creating some new tables, adding a few columns to existing vB tables, and entering the database connection information to the news script) configuration is completed via the vB control panel.

• See it in action at dBforums.com (usenet forums are at the bottom)
• Download latest version for vB 2.2.4

Current version is 20020323 for vB2.xx

Current feature list:

• correct threading of outgoing posts on usenet
• full control panel integration
• email notification to usenet replies
• emoticon translation into vb icons
• vb code removal or conversion prior to posting to usenet
• hyperlinked urls in messages
• color coded, italicized & indented quotes
• vB style quote to usenet style quote conversions for outgoing posts
• logging of outgoing posts
• support for multiple news servers
• support for seperate footers per forum in outgoing posts
• multi-language (selectable) handling of quoted MIME printable headers (for all those funny foreign characters)
• handling of mailing archive groups
• flexible spam control and replacement variable options for incoming and outgoing messages
• configurable auto-expire option
• option for users to show email address in their outgoing usenet posts (may be different than normal one in profile
• option to enable/disable user signatures on outgoing posts.
• fully compatible with vB moderation functions

Still to be done:

• canceling of messages after they have been sent to usenet via control message in accordance with RFC1036.
• binary attachment support
• email to PM gateway

Screeshots:
Main Options
More Options
Configuration of Newsgroups
Add New Newsgroups
Spam Control
What an imported usenet article looks like in vB

The latest version of this hack will always be in this first post of the thread.

Before asking questions in this thread, please read all the posts in this thread. If your question goes unanswered, it will probably be because the question has already been answered countless times in this thread.

This hack was created for use on my forums and will only be supported as time permits.


Links to required Perl Modules

• News::NNTPClient
• Net::SMTP
• MIME::WordDecoder
• Text::AutoFormat
• Mail::Address
• URI::Find
• DBI
• DBD::MySQL
• Date::Parse
• HTML::Entities

[webhost]

ok Paul got first upgrade done, this oneusenet_gateway_v20010714__201.tar.gz

But I forgot a step it said to write down the useragent setting and then put back in, well I forgot, now that I look for it can not find anyway, first where is it and second what can I do now since I forgot it?

Joey

Update fixed

[fastforward]

Originally posted by webhost
ok Paul got first upgrade done, this oneusenet_gateway_v20010714__201.tar.gz

But I forgot a step it said to write down the useragent setting and then put back in, well I forgot, now that I look for it can not find anyway, first where is it and second what can I do now since I forgot it?
Update fixed

Not a big problem. The useragent is used to identify posts on usenet that originated from your forums. The main use is to grab the NNTP server assigned message id for local posts and update the post in the forum.

If no posts were sent to usenet during your very last execution of newnews.pl, you will have no problems. If there was a post sent, then that post will never have it's message id updated and will not get any replies.

So, your best bet is to just pick another useragent (usually your site name) and forget about it.

[webhost]

ok all upgrades done. I am now current.
One question though I need some help with. Never messed with the bbcode's, How do I install those for replacement's q1,q2,q3, I made replacement variables but I know that probably is wrong because they are not working. Can someone direct me a little on this?

[James Cridland]

Yes, this foxed me for a while.

In your control panel, choose "Replacement Variables" and "add" - then fill in below as follows...

Replacement set: [your normal style]
Code to find: [q1]
Code to insert: &nbsp;&nbsp;<font size="1" color="blue">

Replacement set: [your normal style]
Code to find: [/q1]
Code to insert: </font>

...and similar for the other two codes.

At least, that's how I did it.

[webhost]

if you look at image below this what I did for each, I tried
[q1] and as you can see also{q1}, which one is right and also the instructions didn't say anything about using a closing bracket like [/q] or {/q1] so which one is right and do I also have to make 3 more variables for closing, 1 for each q1,q2,q3

got it working

Joey

[James Cridland]

Originally posted by fastforward

90 seconds is most definately NOT about right. It shouldn't even take that long for a full batch of 200 or 300. try putting some debugging lines in the code to see exactly where it goes wrong.

Well, after a lot of fiddling...

To make a huge increase in the speed, comment out (with the closing brackets, of course):
"if ($h = $c->head($mid)) {" (in get_batch)
"if($b = $c->body($mid)) {" (just after the check for spam)

Then it speeds along, as you say it should (though it doesn't find any to import at the end...)

So, for this novice perl programmer - presumably "head" and "body" are in a module somewhere, and this module needs reinstalling?

[tamarian]

Thanks for the update Paul! I'm a slow upgrader, but just installed it after skipping several upgrades

Hope you enjoy your vacation!

[tamarian]

Originally posted by webhost
[B]if you look at image below this what I did for each, I tried
[q1] and as you can see also{q1}, which one is right and also the instructions didn't say anything about using a closing bracket like [/q] or {/q1] so which one is right and do I also have to make 3 more variables for closing, 1 for each q1,q2,q3

I don't think you need the closing brackets. It worked fine for me just as in the instructions.

[tamarian]

Originally posted by webhost
ok all upgrades done. I am now current.
One question though I need some help with. Never messed with the bbcode's, How do I install those for replacement's q1,q2,q3, I made replacement variables but I know that probably is wrong because they are not working. Can someone direct me a little on this?

Oh, I think I know your problem, since you mentioned you never added bbcodes before.

Make sure you enter the example part

delete the [ / q ] , and just add them as in the install doc.

in the example just put [q1] test [/q1]

Could that be it?

[Shaman]

Bug in the subject line:

If there is a "$" in the subject of a new thread (as in "Pentium III 733, $750!", the newnews script will fail.