newsportal/doc/readme-english.txt


                                News portal
                                      
   Version 0.24pre1
   
Introduction

   News portal is a PHP based newsreader. It is licensed under the GNU
   Public License (see enclosed LICENSE).
   
Overview

   This script collection enables the access to a newsserver (by NNTP)
   from a webpage. It allows you to combine web-forums and newsgroups.
   The script is also suitable for presentation of announce newsgroups on
   web pages, without having the user notice that he is in fact accessing
   a newsserver.
   
   The main functionality of the script is located in the file
   newsportal.php3, which contains the major part of the implemented
   php3-functions. In addition to that there are four more php3-files,
   which are directly accessed by the browser.
     * index.php3 shows the available newsgroups of the newsserver (if
       you have added the names to groups.txt)
     * thread.php3 displays the article-overview of a newsgroup. The
       articles are displayed in a thread.
     * article.php3 displays an individual article.
     * post.php3 posts a message into a newsgroup. WARNING: This script
       produces absolutely not RFC conformal messages. Thus 'umlauts' in
       the Subject are not mime encoded ! It still works fine though.
     * config.inc contains the configuration.
     * body.inc contains the header and the body-tag of the pages. This
       way the layout of the pages (i.e. the background) can easily be
       adjusted.
     * german.lang : The German language definitions
     * english.lang : The English language definitions
       
   Since fetching the article overview of the newsserver takes quite some
   time, newsportal caches this data in the directory spool/. Any file
   can be put in this directory, they will automatically be regenerated.
   
Installation:

    1. download the zip or tar.gz archive
    2. unzip it to a directory
    3. The fileconfig.inc must be edited with your settings (the most
       important variables are: $server, $port, $title and $readonly).
    4. Write the names of all groups newsportal should show into the file
       groups.txt. Behind the groupname, seperated by a blank, a
       description of the group can be added. If the description is
       missing, newsportal will try to request the description from the
       newsserver.
    5. The spool directory has to be created and configured to grant read
       an write access to the newsserver ("chmod 777 spool" ).
       
Configuration

   The following adjustments can be made in config.inc
   
   Directories and files:
     * $file_newsportal="newsportal.php3":Name of the file containing the
       newsportal-functions.
     * $file_groups="index.php3": The file which shows the list of
       available newsgroups.
     * $file_thread="thread.php3": The file which shows the
       article-thread of a selected newsgroup
     * $file_article="article.php3": Displays an article
     * $file_post="post.php3": The file which allows you to post an
       article to a newsgroup. This file can be removed, if the system is
       set on readonly (see below).
     * $file_language="english.lang": Reference to the language
       definition file.
     * $file_footer: Optionally, the name of a file can be indicated,
       which will be attached to every article posted to a newsgroup.
       
   Newsserver setip
     * $server : Hostname or IP of the newsserver
     * $port : Port of the newsserver, normally 119
     * $post_server: Optionally an extra newsserver can be indicated here
       which is used by post.php3 for writing articles. This is useful if
       two newsservers need to be accessed, a fast read-only server and a
       slow server to post articles. Be aware that it might take some
       time until the posted article will show up on your main newsserver
       ($server), which you use to read articles.
     * $post_port : Port of your post-newsserver
     * $server_auth_user: If the newsserver requires authentication by
       name and password put your username here. Otherwise just set the
       variable to "".
     * $server_auth_pass: Put your password here.
       
   Thread Layout
     * $treestyle :The appearance of the message tree:
          + 0: Simple listing of the articles
          + 1: Easy listing of the articles, with some more HTML tags
          + 2: Simple listing in a table
          + 3: Threaded with HTML-tags (UL, li)
          + 4: Threaded with text characters
          + 5: Threaded with graphical images
          + 6: Threaded with text characters and table
          + 7: Threaded with graphical images table
     * $thread_fontPre: The code given here is put in front of every text
       fragment in thread.php3, i.e. font face or size can be set.
     * $thread_fontPost: The same as $thread_fontPre, only code is
       appended at the end of the text.
     * $thread_showDate,
       $thread_showSubject,
       $thread_showAuthor:
          + true: the date / the subject / the author are displayed in
            the thread
          + false: output is suppressed.
     * $thread_maxSubject : Maximum number of characters of the subject
       displayed
     * $maxarticles: This number indicates the maximum amount of overview
       data of a newsgroup newsportal tries to get from the newsserver.
       "0" means no limitation. $maxarticles also indicates the amount of
       articles to be stored in the spoolfiles. A lower value means less
       work for newsportal
     * $maxarticles_extra: The problem with $maxarticles is that all
       article data must be completely requested again by the new server,
       if the indicated value is exceeded. $maxarticles_extra can be set
       to prevent this. The article-spool will only be restructured if
       $maxarticles + $maxarticles_extra articles are present, whereby
       $maxarticles many article data are requested. Only if an exact
       given number of articles should be displayed on the web page, the
       value of this variable schould be set "0".
     * $age_count : Number of different age levels for the coloured
       marking of articles
     * $$age_time[n] : maximal age of an article in seconds, so that the
       article gets marked with the colour $age_color[n]. n is a natural
       number > = 1 and all numbers from 1 to n must be assigned, gaps
       are not permitted.
     * $age_color[n]: The colour in which the article is marked
     * $thread_sorting : The sort sequence for the articles:
          + 0: No assortment, articles are displayed in the order in
            which they are polled from the server. This is nearly like
            ascending assortment.
          + 1: ascending assortment, the oldest articles to the top.
          + -1: descending assortment, the newest articles to the top.
     * $articles_per_page: If this value is not 0, the maximum amount of
       articles is given, which are to be displayed on one page at the
       same time. The thread will be split into individual pages.
     * $startpage: In connection with $$articles_per_page the variable
       indicates, which page is to be displayed first:
          + "first": The page with the newest articles
          + "last": the page with the oldest articles
       The specification should be co-ordinated with $thread_sorting.
       "first" for 0 and 1, and "last" for -1.
       
   Article layout
     * $article_show["Subject"],
       $article_show["From"],
       $article_show["Newsgroups"],
       $article_show["Organization"],
       $article_show["Date"],
       $article_show["Message-ID"],
       $article_show["User-Agent"],
       $article_show["References"]: "true" displays the respective header
       line in article.php3, by "false" it is suppressed.
       
   Frame support
   Example files for the frame support are located in extras/frames/. In
   this section the names of the frames can be defined. If you want to
   use frames you have to set the variable $frame_thread to
   "thread_frameset.php3".
     * $frame_articles: Name of the article frame. Must be the same as
       defined in thread_frameset.php3.
     * $frame_thread: Name of the thread frame.
     * $frame_groups: Name of the frame for the grouplist, normally set
       to "_top" to open a new frameset.
     * $frame_post : Name of the frame for post.php3
     * $frame_threadframeset : Name of the frame, in which the frameset
       is to appear, which takes up the article and thread Frames.
       Normally set to "_top".
     * $frame_externallink: Target frame for external links within
       articles.
       
   Safety settings
     * $send_poster_host: "true" means that a header-line named
       "X-HTTP-Posting-Host:" will be attached to every posted article,
       set to the hostname of the user who wrote the article.
     * $readonly : if set to "true", the newsportal is read-only. The
       file post.php3 can be safely removed.
     * $testgroup : if set to "true" newsportal checks if a group is
       listed in groups.txt when accessed through thread.php3. Otherwise
       a group could be seen simply entering the right URL, although the
       group is not displayed in the group list.
     * $validate_email : Sets how newsportal checks an email address in
       post.php3 for syntax:
          + 0: no examination. Not recommended, since the newsserver will
            give an error message, if the address is not syntactically
            correct.
          + 1: Checks the address on syntactic correctness.
          + 2: Additionally a MX or A record is checked for the
            domain-name of the e-mail address. Newsportal performs a
            hostname lookup.
       
   General setting
     * $title: The value of this variable is put in the title-header of
       the generated webpages.
     * $organization : Name of your organization. Put after the
       "Organization:"-header when posting articles.
     * $setcookies : Permits the user to save his name and his
       email-address as cookies in his browser.
     * $compress_spoolfiles: Sets whether the spool files should be
       compressed or not. This is recommended under normal conditions,
       since the size of the spoolfiles shrinks approximately to about
       15% of the original size. Be aware that some PHP-Versions do not
       support compressing
       
Safety notes

   A few things must be kept in mind to not allow newsportal to open
   safety-holes:
     * config.inc can be requested by every user that knows the filename,
       if you do not move it to a protected area of your webserver.
       
   This script was originally (and actually still) only meant for access
   to local newsgroups. If you use it with UseNet newsgroups, following
   problems could show up:
     * Articles could be posted anonymously (i.e. spamming), see
       $send_poster_host
     * Newsportal produces 8-bit header lines (i.e. the Subject), which
       is not permitted. However there do not seem to be any problems.
     * There are lists with so-called "open" newsservers in the internet.
       Mostly "open" doesn't mean for this server that everyone is
       allowed to use this server. Normally it means that the operator of
       the server forgot to protect his server adequatly. So before using
       an "open" newsserver, you should make sure that the operator
       permits the use of his server for newsportal.
     * Posting articles anonymously is not accepted in most UseNet
       groups. Before you give writing access to a newsgroup, you should
       ask the users in the newsgroup if they have no objections. Do not
       give public write access on UseNet newsgroups, if you do not know
       exactly, what you are doing!
       
   The author reserves the right not to be responsible for the
   topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the program
   provided. Liability claims regarding damage caused by the program
   provided, will therefore be rejected.
   In other words: Use this program at your own risk !
   
Compatibility

   Newsportal should work with every phpserver with php3 support and
   every newsserver. Webserver and newsserver do not need to run on the
   same machine.
   
Contact

   Florian Amrhein
   email: florian.amrhein@gmx.de
   WWW: http://florian-amrhein.de
1
2	News portal
3
4	Version 0.24pre1
5
6	Introduction
7
8	News portal is a PHP based newsreader. It is licensed under the GNU
9	Public License (see enclosed LICENSE).
10
11	Overview
12
13	This script collection enables the access to a newsserver (by NNTP)
14	from a webpage. It allows you to combine web-forums and newsgroups.
15	The script is also suitable for presentation of announce newsgroups on
16	web pages, without having the user notice that he is in fact accessing
17	a newsserver.
18
19	The main functionality of the script is located in the file
20	newsportal.php3, which contains the major part of the implemented
21	php3-functions. In addition to that there are four more php3-files,
22	which are directly accessed by the browser.
23	* index.php3 shows the available newsgroups of the newsserver (if
24	you have added the names to groups.txt)
25	* thread.php3 displays the article-overview of a newsgroup. The
26	articles are displayed in a thread.
27	* article.php3 displays an individual article.
28	* post.php3 posts a message into a newsgroup. WARNING: This script
29	produces absolutely not RFC conformal messages. Thus 'umlauts' in
30	the Subject are not mime encoded ! It still works fine though.
31	* config.inc contains the configuration.
32	* body.inc contains the header and the body-tag of the pages. This
33	way the layout of the pages (i.e. the background) can easily be
34	adjusted.
35	* german.lang : The German language definitions
36	* english.lang : The English language definitions
37
38	Since fetching the article overview of the newsserver takes quite some
39	time, newsportal caches this data in the directory spool/. Any file
40	can be put in this directory, they will automatically be regenerated.
41
42	Installation:
43
44	1. download the zip or tar.gz archive
45	2. unzip it to a directory
46	3. The fileconfig.inc must be edited with your settings (the most
47	important variables are: $server, $port, $title and $readonly).
48	4. Write the names of all groups newsportal should show into the file
49	groups.txt. Behind the groupname, seperated by a blank, a
50	description of the group can be added. If the description is
51	missing, newsportal will try to request the description from the
52	newsserver.
53	5. The spool directory has to be created and configured to grant read
54	an write access to the newsserver ("chmod 777 spool" ).
55
56	Configuration
57
58	The following adjustments can be made in config.inc
59
60	Directories and files:
61	* $file_newsportal="newsportal.php3":Name of the file containing the
62	newsportal-functions.
63	* $file_groups="index.php3": The file which shows the list of
64	available newsgroups.
65	* $file_thread="thread.php3": The file which shows the
66	article-thread of a selected newsgroup
67	* $file_article="article.php3": Displays an article
68	* $file_post="post.php3": The file which allows you to post an
69	article to a newsgroup. This file can be removed, if the system is
70	set on readonly (see below).
71	* $file_language="english.lang": Reference to the language
72	definition file.
73	* $file_footer: Optionally, the name of a file can be indicated,
74	which will be attached to every article posted to a newsgroup.
75
76	Newsserver setip
77	* $server : Hostname or IP of the newsserver
78	* $port : Port of the newsserver, normally 119
79	* $post_server: Optionally an extra newsserver can be indicated here
80	which is used by post.php3 for writing articles. This is useful if
81	two newsservers need to be accessed, a fast read-only server and a
82	slow server to post articles. Be aware that it might take some
83	time until the posted article will show up on your main newsserver
84	($server), which you use to read articles.
85	* $post_port : Port of your post-newsserver
86	* $server_auth_user: If the newsserver requires authentication by
87	name and password put your username here. Otherwise just set the
88	variable to "".
89	* $server_auth_pass: Put your password here.
90
91	Thread Layout
92	* $treestyle :The appearance of the message tree:
93	+ 0: Simple listing of the articles
94	+ 1: Easy listing of the articles, with some more HTML tags
95	+ 2: Simple listing in a table
96	+ 3: Threaded with HTML-tags (UL, li)
97	+ 4: Threaded with text characters
98	+ 5: Threaded with graphical images
99	+ 6: Threaded with text characters and table
100	+ 7: Threaded with graphical images table
101	* $thread_fontPre: The code given here is put in front of every text
102	fragment in thread.php3, i.e. font face or size can be set.
103	* $thread_fontPost: The same as $thread_fontPre, only code is
104	appended at the end of the text.
105	* $thread_showDate,
106	$thread_showSubject,
107	$thread_showAuthor:
108	+ true: the date / the subject / the author are displayed in
109	the thread
110	+ false: output is suppressed.
111	* $thread_maxSubject : Maximum number of characters of the subject
112	displayed
113	* $maxarticles: This number indicates the maximum amount of overview
114	data of a newsgroup newsportal tries to get from the newsserver.
115	"0" means no limitation. $maxarticles also indicates the amount of
116	articles to be stored in the spoolfiles. A lower value means less
117	work for newsportal
118	* $maxarticles_extra: The problem with $maxarticles is that all
119	article data must be completely requested again by the new server,
120	if the indicated value is exceeded. $maxarticles_extra can be set
121	to prevent this. The article-spool will only be restructured if
122	$maxarticles + $maxarticles_extra articles are present, whereby
123	$maxarticles many article data are requested. Only if an exact
124	given number of articles should be displayed on the web page, the
125	value of this variable schould be set "0".
126	* $age_count : Number of different age levels for the coloured
127	marking of articles
128	* $$age_time[n] : maximal age of an article in seconds, so that the
129	article gets marked with the colour $age_color[n]. n is a natural
130	number > = 1 and all numbers from 1 to n must be assigned, gaps
131	are not permitted.
132	* $age_color[n]: The colour in which the article is marked
133	* $thread_sorting : The sort sequence for the articles:
134	+ 0: No assortment, articles are displayed in the order in
135	which they are polled from the server. This is nearly like
136	ascending assortment.
137	+ 1: ascending assortment, the oldest articles to the top.
138	+ -1: descending assortment, the newest articles to the top.
139	* $articles_per_page: If this value is not 0, the maximum amount of
140	articles is given, which are to be displayed on one page at the
141	same time. The thread will be split into individual pages.
142	* $startpage: In connection with $$articles_per_page the variable
143	indicates, which page is to be displayed first:
144	+ "first": The page with the newest articles
145	+ "last": the page with the oldest articles
146	The specification should be co-ordinated with $thread_sorting.
147	"first" for 0 and 1, and "last" for -1.
148
149	Article layout
150	* $article_show["Subject"],
151	$article_show["From"],
152	$article_show["Newsgroups"],
153	$article_show["Organization"],
154	$article_show["Date"],
155	$article_show["Message-ID"],
156	$article_show["User-Agent"],
157	$article_show["References"]: "true" displays the respective header
158	line in article.php3, by "false" it is suppressed.
159
160	Frame support
161	Example files for the frame support are located in extras/frames/. In
162	this section the names of the frames can be defined. If you want to
163	use frames you have to set the variable $frame_thread to
164	"thread_frameset.php3".
165	* $frame_articles: Name of the article frame. Must be the same as
166	defined in thread_frameset.php3.
167	* $frame_thread: Name of the thread frame.
168	* $frame_groups: Name of the frame for the grouplist, normally set
169	to "_top" to open a new frameset.
170	* $frame_post : Name of the frame for post.php3
171	* $frame_threadframeset : Name of the frame, in which the frameset
172	is to appear, which takes up the article and thread Frames.
173	Normally set to "_top".
174	* $frame_externallink: Target frame for external links within
175	articles.
176
177	Safety settings
178	* $send_poster_host: "true" means that a header-line named
179	"X-HTTP-Posting-Host:" will be attached to every posted article,
180	set to the hostname of the user who wrote the article.
181	* $readonly : if set to "true", the newsportal is read-only. The
182	file post.php3 can be safely removed.
183	* $testgroup : if set to "true" newsportal checks if a group is
184	listed in groups.txt when accessed through thread.php3. Otherwise
185	a group could be seen simply entering the right URL, although the
186	group is not displayed in the group list.
187	* $validate_email : Sets how newsportal checks an email address in
188	post.php3 for syntax:
189	+ 0: no examination. Not recommended, since the newsserver will
190	give an error message, if the address is not syntactically
191	correct.
192	+ 1: Checks the address on syntactic correctness.
193	+ 2: Additionally a MX or A record is checked for the
194	domain-name of the e-mail address. Newsportal performs a
195	hostname lookup.
196
197	General setting
198	* $title: The value of this variable is put in the title-header of
199	the generated webpages.
200	* $organization : Name of your organization. Put after the
201	"Organization:"-header when posting articles.
202	* $setcookies : Permits the user to save his name and his
203	email-address as cookies in his browser.
204	* $compress_spoolfiles: Sets whether the spool files should be
205	compressed or not. This is recommended under normal conditions,
206	since the size of the spoolfiles shrinks approximately to about
207	15% of the original size. Be aware that some PHP-Versions do not
208	support compressing
209
210	Safety notes
211
212	A few things must be kept in mind to not allow newsportal to open
213	safety-holes:
214	* config.inc can be requested by every user that knows the filename,
215	if you do not move it to a protected area of your webserver.
216
217	This script was originally (and actually still) only meant for access
218	to local newsgroups. If you use it with UseNet newsgroups, following
219	problems could show up:
220	* Articles could be posted anonymously (i.e. spamming), see
221	$send_poster_host
222	* Newsportal produces 8-bit header lines (i.e. the Subject), which
223	is not permitted. However there do not seem to be any problems.
224	* There are lists with so-called "open" newsservers in the internet.
225	Mostly "open" doesn't mean for this server that everyone is
226	allowed to use this server. Normally it means that the operator of
227	the server forgot to protect his server adequatly. So before using
228	an "open" newsserver, you should make sure that the operator
229	permits the use of his server for newsportal.
230	* Posting articles anonymously is not accepted in most UseNet
231	groups. Before you give writing access to a newsgroup, you should
232	ask the users in the newsgroup if they have no objections. Do not
233	give public write access on UseNet newsgroups, if you do not know
234	exactly, what you are doing!
235
236	The author reserves the right not to be responsible for the
237	topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the program
238	provided. Liability claims regarding damage caused by the program
239	provided, will therefore be rejected.
240	In other words: Use this program at your own risk !
241
242	Compatibility
243
244	Newsportal should work with every phpserver with php3 support and
245	every newsserver. Webserver and newsserver do not need to run on the
246	same machine.
247
248	Contact
249
250	Florian Amrhein
251	email: florian.amrhein@gmx.de
252	WWW: http://florian-amrhein.de