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).

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by chas_h

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.

Actually the original VB2 version does not have admin control panel. I believe there is another hack out there to add the control in Admin panel.

The cron job is the same as vb2 version.

I don't understand all these difficulties people are talking about my hack of hack. If one can not be bother to use PHPMyadmin, or can't set up a basic cron job. I am afraid the official release is not going to help much.

I understand my hack is a quick hack of the original. Other than the table prefix which most of people do not use and mail to usenet function, the rest should perform pretty much like the vb2 version if not better in some areas.

The table prefix is very easy to add, anyone with basic php skill can add that. I may add that if I can be bothered.
I am not sure how widely the mail to usenet is used. The basic function is there, I have not been bothered to test it, that is all.

I do hope too Gilby comes out with an official release, but for one to expect everything will be much easier to install or debug, I am afraid he/she will be wrong.

[Bro_Joey_Gowdy]

[high]* Bro_Joey_Gowdy knows basic html however needs to settle down and take time to learn PhP/Mysql [/high]

[chas_h]

Originally Posted by lierduh

Actually the original VB2 version does not have admin control panel. I believe there is another hack out there to add the control in Admin panel.

The cron job is the same as vb2 version.

I don't understand all these difficulties people are talking about my hack of hack. If one can not be bother to use PHPMyadmin, or can't set up a basic cron job. I am afraid the official release is not going to help much.

I understand my hack is a quick hack of the original. Other than the table prefix which most of people do not use and mail to usenet function, the rest should perform pretty much like the vb2 version if not better in some areas.

The table prefix is very easy to add, anyone with basic php skill can add that. I may add that if I can be bothered.
I am not sure how widely the mail to usenet is used. The basic function is there, I have not been bothered to test it, that is all.

I do hope too Giby comes out with an official release, but for one to expect everything will be much easier to install or debug, I am afraid he/she will be wrong.

lierduh,
I was not trying to say that there is anything wrong with your hack, and you are right, there was an extra hack to get the admin panel function for VB-2. I am very happy with the way your hack is working now (for newsgroups). What I am saying is that anyone who is not familiar with editing the tables in MySql is going to need alot of help. And a 'simple cron job' is not simple for a first time user either.
You have to understand that some people (myself included) get spoiled by some of the hacks here which have so much instruction and support to go with them that they are easy for novices to install. Anything beyond that is out of the reach of most of the people in this forum.
Could you explain what you mean when you talk about the 'table prefix' being easy to use? I don't know what you are refering to.
And thanks for taking this hack as far as you have, no one else seems interested in working on this right now and it is a very useful thing to have at one's forum.

Chas.

[mirdin]

Can anyone point me to the hack(s) I need to download then?

I have no problem editing mysql tables, just as long as I know the hack is supposed to work properly

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by chas_h

lierduh,
Could you explain what you mean when you talk about the 'table prefix' being easy to use? I don't know what you are refering to.
And thanks for taking this hack as far as you have, no one else seems interested in working on this right now and it is a very useful thing to have at one's forum.

Chas.

VB3 allows you have a prefix for all your tables. eg. for "post" table, you can have "myvb3-post". This is set in the config.php file.

If you don't know what this is, then you do not need to worry.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by mirdin

Can anyone point me to the hack(s) I need to download then?

I have no problem editing mysql tables, just as long as I know the hack is supposed to work properly

page 44

[Erwin]

lierduh, just so you know, your vB3 version of this hack works flawlessly. Thanks.

[Erwin]

Originally Posted by Erwin

lierduh, just so you know, your vB3 version of this hack works flawlessly. Thanks.

Okay, I spoke too soon. LOL!

There are some bugs with lierduh's vB3 mod.

1. The post count is wrong for some reason - the mod grossly overcounts the number of posts being imported into the forum. Updating the forum counter fixes this.

2. Empty threads are sometimes made in other forums - I suspect the threadid is getting inserted in the wrong place or something gets inserted out of line.

Otherwise, the mod works.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Erwin

Okay, I spoke too soon. LOL!

There are some bugs with lierduh's vB3 mod.

1. The post count is wrong for some reason - the mod grossly overcounts the number of posts being imported into the forum. Updating the forum counter fixes this.

2. Empty threads are sometimes made in other forums - I suspect the threadid is getting inserted in the wrong place or something gets inserted out of line.

Otherwise, the mod works.

1. Need to check. Does this happen each time the new posts are imported? or just the initial import.

One possible thing could be two instances of gateway.php call running. I suggest importing all the threads first, then set up the cron job. If the cron job starts another gateway.php call before the first one is finished. Then anything is possible, it can also bring down the database.

2. This is a known issue. At the moment the threads are inserted by the subject just as the original vb2 version, Gilby had his reason to design it this way. A better way to do will be using the References in the header since I have added an extra field in the post table to store this.

I will look at it again in a weekend soon.

[nomic]

Hi,

are there free usenet servers available or do I have to pay for them? If yes, where can I find them?