I can't give you a working solution but I can only suggest a starting point that might be of some use: RSS Import plugin (https://elgg.org/plugins/1090220). As I understand the plugin description (haven't tried it myself) you can pull posting from other sites via a rss feed (which the other site would have to provide) and add then on your site. This can be done either manually or in an automatic way controlled by a cronjob. Two things would require some work though: first, the plugin hasn't been upgraded for Elgg 2 so it's quite likely not fully working (or not working at all) without some changes in the code. Secondly, the plugin would allow to add the external posting right now only as a blog, bookmark or page entry but not yet as a news item. As the news plugin is based on the bundled blog plugin this should be not too difficult to achive.
I can't provide any further help though. So, you would have either getting it working on your own or you would have to hire a developer.
is the news plugin not the blog
You won't find this one table in the database where you have everything that belongs to the news posting in one place. Explaining the whole Elgg data model and database scheme is a bit too complex to get it done in just a few sentences. Basically, Elgg handles most stuff with entities (entities table) that represent a user, a group or some kind of content item. Then there can be metadata entries (metadata table) associated with an entity that contain additonal info to the entity. On Elgg 3 the previously separate metastring table got merged into the metadata table that contained string or integer values of a metadata entry. So on Elgg 2 you would find for example the text of a news posting in the metastrings table whereas it's in the metadata table on Elgg 3. Some further info can be found at http://learn.elgg.org/en/stable/design/database.html.
But in any case the advice: DON'T modify the database directly if you don't know exactly what you are doing!!!
And with regards to the News plugin: what are you trying to do? Why the need to find the corresponding entries in the database? And in case you are trying to use it on Elgg 3: DON'T - it's not yet compatible with Elgg 3 as I haven't updated it yet. Btw. the plugin is also available in the same version here on the community site.
I want to add contents automatically ... how can I do this?iionly
Which plugin are you using and from where have you downloaded it?
Maybe the plugins available at https://github.com/arckinteractive/upload_users/releases or https://github.com/ColdTrick/profile_sync/releases work. With the Coldtrick plugin I'm not sure if it allows adding users with csv but it says it's a possible source.
I can't give you a detailed, working solution. I can only give you some hints that might be useful to implement a working solution.
Have you implemented the additonal input fields using the Agerestriction plugin as example how to do it? If yes, you should already have an registration page with your additional questions and the answers given by the users when trying to create a new account would be evaluated in the plugin hook callback function you would have to have modified accordingly (using the workflow of the Agerestriction plugin as example).
This would result in the users either getting their account created when they provided the desired answers or they would be brought back to the registration page to be able to fix their mistakes.
Now if you don't want that they can change their answers as often as necessary it gets a bit more complicated. The Agerestriction plugin would not save any data to keep track of failed registration attempts. But if you want to limit the number of attempts you would have to keep track of failed attempts and therefore save data in the database (e.g. IP address used on failed attempts). The question is if you want to implement this from scratch on your own. One possibility could be to make use of the Spam Login Filter plugin blacklist. I can't tell you how exactly the Spam Login Filter plugin handles this in its code - you would have to study the code yourself. I just assume that there might be already some functions in this plugin that you could use (with the Spam Login Filter plugin installed and enabled) that would help to identify the IP address, add an IP address to the local blacklist and to check if an IP address is already blocked (though in this case the Spam Login Filter plugin would deny account creation already).
In the plugin hook function in your function you would add a counter variable that adds up correct answers. If the counter is above the threshold to allow account created, let the account get created. If the counter is below this threshold but still high enough to allow for a retry, forward to the register page. And if the counter is too low to allow a new try, identify and block the IP address (either by making use of functions offered by Spam Login Filter or by implementing the code of this plugin within your own plugin).
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