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).

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by hubba

The script works for me. Just a few errors, as double postings. The problem is that this the NG posts are listed as new posts, our members have no difference between NG posts and forumposts

hubba, search this thread for the word "exclude". You'll see what parameters need to be added templates that call search.php to get the Usenet posts out of new post searches.

[hubba]

Ah thx Allan, that will help. Got it managed. One question more, how to exclude the NG postings from the counting of new themes/posts?

[allan grossman]

I don't know, hubba - I use vbIndex and just exclude those forums. Someone else might know, though.

BTW, lierduh - I did get my gateway fixed. gateway.php got corrupted somehow - I replaced it and everything took off

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Bro_Joey_Gowdy

[high]* Bro_Joey_Gowdy waits impatiently for an official vb3 NNTP Gateway[/high]

Perhaps you should list the features and functions you want in the vb3 gateway. Gilby, the original author did ask for these inputs for the future vb3 gateway. Otherwise, list what your problems are instead of big font posts. No one owes you a vb3 gateway, so be more constructive than demand.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by allan grossman

BTW, lierduh - I did get my gateway fixed. gateway.php got corrupted somehow - I replaced it and everything took off

That is good you have it fixed. It was error 381 related. Long time no show Allan.

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by Imhotep

What about my posts not showing up in the group? I did a test posting from my forum... and then later tried to view it using Outlook Express. (as I normally view the groups) Nothing appeared.

thanks

If you run the script manually and cut and paste the message on the screen to here. Someone might be able to help you.

[allan grossman]

Originally Posted by lierduh

That is good you have it fixed. It was error 381 related. Long time no show Allan.

Good to see you too, lierduh - I've been a bit busy

381 isn't an error, it's a password prompt - I checked.

Right after the 381 I got group and article numbers - so I did manage to authenticate to the server. I didn't keep the old gateway.php to see where it was broken but it couldn't have been too much because I glanced over the file a couple of times while I was trying to fix it.

[locatha]

Hey can anyone give me some ideas on how fast this hack works as far as importing msgs from usenet? I have been looking for something like this and have a few usenet groups i would like to have in my VB but they are fairly large and get almost 1000 each (there is three of them. Plus of course the backlog. about how long does it take, the server is a dedicated celeron 1.7 ghz. thanks and great looking hack.

[Odoin]

Back when I was using it on VB 2 it was really quick once it got the first batch of messages... the bottle neck is getting the messages from the NTTP server... Keep in mind a lot of messages will grow your DB quickly.

Mark

[locatha]

how many messages did you have in the initial batch or were doing per day. for my 3k per day if i ran it hourly it would have something like 100 msgs a run, would I need to up my php timeout from 30 seconds for that, or does it download 100 msgs in less than that? I might have to run it more often, any ideas?