View Full Version : Forums v Email Discussion lists, a suggestion
Another forum
http://www.sitescape.com/forum.html
but don't worry vbulletin, don't think many will convert. It is different and "slightly" more expensive.
Anyway.. why posting?
This is the feature i liked the look of:
Users can email to a designated address, whereupon Forum will post it in the appropriate forum as a new entry.
what do you think?
lots of people out there like using email discussion lists. Personally i hate em but i think it would be possible to turn vbulletin into the ability to have both.
How does it work?
Well people subscribe to a discussion list. This is in fact a forum of your forum.
Say forum name is book talk
When someone posts a thread or a post then everyone who email subscribes to the forum gets an email with the message. Can set it up to do an email for every post, an email once a day or an email say at 25 posts (like egroups).
People can also send posts by email. To do this they send email:
forumname@yourdomain.com
now if the subject is say "Re I like Grisham"
then this post will get added to the thread "I like Grisham"
see what i mean?
This way the forum acts as BOTH a web based forum and an email one. I would love that it would be brilliant. I can think of a few egroups lists that would then convert over to my forum brining in massive traffic and massive member base.
I think the hardest bit is going to be error checking the email addresses (only from subscribed users) and making it easy for a reply to a post so that the post gets put in the forum in the correct place.
I would love to hear suggestions on this. I might install the software i just found (has a free trial) to see how it works. What do you think? I really hope someone is interested in this enough to think about making it. I would love to but please complete ignorance :)
This would be a great idea as I could also convert a lot of users who refuse to leave email lists.
There will be those who won't be for this idea as people using email to respond and send messages are not visiting your server and hence not making you any money.
If the email had a nice little enticing text ad link in it to your sponsor that may sway a few.
Yes, i thought of that as well being a problem.
Suggestions
1) Text Ads
2) HTML Ads.
- you could make it so that you only sent it to html based email clients. This is going to cut more people off but it could be an option.
3) Set a limit on the amount of emails people receive?
4) Set a max size on a post, ie it is cut off after a certain amount with a link to it in the forum
5) Only alllow discussion type things in certain forums/categories not all of them.
In the end i think the email ads is not a bad idea. Looking around for advertising, it seems that email ads actually generate a higher CPM than web adds that people have an amazing ability to filter out. Text ads are so much easier to fit into contact they may work out better. (and of course less load on server, less bandwidth which all results in lower costs).
Rangersfan, as you are one of the people who could probably make the hack i am trying to pursuade you here :) !
This is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time!
I would absolutely love it!!!
Hi Chris,
Great idea! I'll discuss it with John and see if we can integrate this feature into a future version.
All the best,
James
Same here.... I know that my forum's traffic would be greatly increase if we had an integrated email list, where people could use whichever format they prefered.
-Chris
** drooling over this idea **
I could actually get rid of using egroups if this comes to pass!
sounds nice... but for some reason doesn't appeal to me ?
oh well i started something popular here :)
James that would be really cool, thanks.
Perhaps we should thrash out what/how we would actually want it to work?
How would the board actually intercept emails? would it use a pop3 account and read them of that? would we need some extra server software do you think to actually intercept the email? i don't know how that bit would work.
Glad people see the potential of the idea, would be a "killer" feature certainly!
Originally posted by chrispadfield
Glad people see the potential of the idea, would be a "killer" feature certainly!
Yes it sure would be.... I haven't seen any other forum software that does this, except one that has email and news group integration.... of course that package is over $1,500 and only runs on Windows. I really think this would give vB a big advantage over some of it's competitors.
-Chris
Yes it sure would be.... I haven't seen any other forum software that does this, except one that has email and news group integration.... of course that package is over $1,500 and only runs on Windows.
Which package are you talking about chris ?
Thanks,
Benj
my link in the first post i think :)
No, I don't think so, I think think Chris refers to a similar product.
Benj
Originally posted by Benj
Which package are you talking about chris ?
WebBoard from O'Reilly http://webboard.oreilly.com/
Actually prices have gone up since I last looked.... $1800 for MS SQL and $3000 for Oracle. When I first started out I ran on a shared copy of WebBoard, but was very dissapointed with downtime every day and the performance was slow. Then when my host tried to upgrade from WB 3 to 4, they lost half of my posts and didn't have a backup.
-Chris
Ok, i see.
Well, I found these product forums not better than product like our VB.
The advantages of these product is that they have full of stuff integrated.... but as a standalone forum, for the same price, I would still get VB.
Benj
Originally posted by chrispadfield
How would the board actually intercept emails? would it use a pop3 account and read them of that? would we need some extra server software do you think to actually intercept the email? i don't know how that bit would work.
Glad people see the potential of the idea, would be a "killer" feature certainly!
You don't need extra software. Wouldn't really be hard to implement either on Unix. Right now on most Unix systems have a program called mail installed. This program writes incoming emails to an indexed text file. By using PHP or C++ you can open the mail program, cycle through the messages and create new entries into the MySQL Database. The major trick will be reading the headers to determine if a message is a new topic or reply and attaching the replies to the proper thread.
I have done the reverse of this before, program reads a table in Oracle, sends each record as an email and them marks them as sent in the table.
Originally posted by wluke
The major trick will be reading the headers to determine if a message is a new topic or reply and attaching the replies to the proper thread.
The way I've seen this handled before is this: All emails go to an aliases like api@progresstalk.com for a new thread on the API forum, or chat@progresstalk.com to go into the Chit Chat forum. All new posts are sent out with a 'special' reply-to email address like api-34321@progresstalk.com, where API is the forum name and 34321 is the thread id. This makes it really easy to tell if it is a new post, or reply, and where it should be posted to.
-Chris
Originally posted by Chris Schreiber
[QUOTE]
The way I've seen this handled before is this: All emails go to an aliases like api@progresstalk.com for a new thread on the API forum, or chat@progresstalk.com to go into the Chit Chat forum. All new posts are sent out with a 'special' reply-to email address like api-34321@progresstalk.com, where API is the forum name and 34321 is the thread id. This makes it really easy to tell if it is a new post, or reply, and where it should be posted to.
-Chris
That makes sense. Only problem with that possibly would be if you want to do an "archive" ie send out 25 posts in one email. I guess each post on that email can have listed a special reply email address for it.
--
Other thing to think about is moderating posts, deleting posts and also members. I assume that everyone will have to register the same way and then can just use either option (with checking to make sure the email came from an address).
What would happen say if user x posts a new thread and a moderator deletes it because it is rubbish thread. But then someone replies to it by email? Sort of error checking that will have to be taken into account.
At least it is sounding like it is going to be possible to implement. Looking forward to it sometime.
other thing is i use qmail as opposed to sendmail. Although my path to sendmail somehow works by sending it through qmail (i am no sysadmin! and this was done for me) I wonder if that sort of thing will make a difference in this type of case.
Just another thought.
You just send back an email to the user stating that the thread he/she has replied to has been deleted and/or closed depending on the situation.
PHP actually has an IMAP, &c module (http://www.php.net/manual/ref.imap.php) that would make it possible to do mail and news interfaces without too much work (for James and John, that is!).
a pop account would be enough.
now, the main issue here is - mail goes to pop account, but vB would not catch it at the same time. You would need a cron job to periodically check the pop account. However, that could mean that i email the list, someone posts in the meantime on the board itself, the email gets placed before the post.
What is missing is a way that every new mail goes directly to a script, which I have no idea how to do.
If that could be resolved, then this would be a easy to do hack.
The issue of new post or reply is easy - you would have the threadid in the subject line all the time.
This "thread id" in the subject line only works if you send out individual emails. This is not going to work for most boards.
A lot of egroups sites that i am intersted in have traffic of about 75 - 200 posts per day. Some of the lesser ones more around 25. No one wants 200 posts per day in their email box. They want maybe 4 emails with 25 posts.
Lots of these users are used to just hitting reply and sending a message, as there is no threaded strucuture they just make the title up as they go along.
If we do this batch mailing of say 25 emails (i think essential) then this is something that will have to change to keep the email structure. Personally i would want each post to have an email link by it as i think chris suggested with say popaccount34343@domain.com (with 34343 being the thread id). The subject title would then be the subject title of a post like you can do on the forum.
For new threads they would have to write the exact words new thead - Title in the subject line. This is to prevent getting hundreds of new threads from people just hitting reply. Either that or a new thread has to be sent to a different email box.
This is why 1 pop3 account will not work, need to be able to accept lots of different incoming email address, 1 for each thread.
Interested to here what john (via james :) ) thinks would be a good way to do this and what he actually thinks of the idea in the first place.
the pop mail still remains the problem, and most hosts don;t give unlimited pop3's.
You could always put the threadid tag at say the end of the message with a ---DO NOT MODIFY---
most accounts get unlimited email forwarding though into a pop3 account. That would be enough wouldn't it?
The thread343@domain.com really does sound like the best way to go.
I do think most of us have a catch-all account where as (anything)@ourdomain.com will go to our main pop3 account.
AH, right, forgot about the catchall. I guess most will have it.
I'm looking at some scripts written by people for Mailing List admin and seeing if I can convert one of them into this.
How would incoming spam be managed?
On a slightly different tangent, how well does vBulletin resolve for wireless Palm and Visor handhelds?
It might be interesting to experiment with an arrangement where someone using a synced handheld could subscribe to a specific forum and load up threads and posts, go about their day, respond on the PDA and transmit their responses next time they sync.
we could always WAP vBulletin!
Half the battle is sending out the email.. Just use the following template:
Forum: $forumtitle
Thread Name: $subject
Reply from: $username
$message
Thread: $bburl/showthread.php?threadid=$threadid
Post: $bburl/showthread.php?postid=$postid#$postid
Reply: mailto:reply_$threadid@yourforums.com
If your forum member has Email Distribution checked then you could send this email to them through the forum system. It might be better to allow them to choose email distribution on a per forum basis. Then once the email gets to your catchall account you need to parse it and put it in the correct location.
I am also worried about how to prevent spam and as well as that, to prevent people assuming others identity.
I want email users to post with username in the same way, now this will just be taken from their return email address but of course this can be fourged so the only thing i can think of it somehow having their password in there as well, is there really any other option? I certainly don't want an email subscriber being able to send a post that say appears to be from an admin because they forged their email address into the headers.
Originally posted by chrispadfield
I am also worried about how to prevent spam and as well as that, to prevent people assuming others identity.
I want email users to post with username in the same way, now this will just be taken from their return email address but of course this can be fourged so the only thing i can think of it somehow having their password in there as well, is there really any other option? I certainly don't want an email subscriber being able to send a post that say appears to be from an admin because they forged their email address into the headers.
vBulletin already has a password encryption function. You can see it when you log in to the system (it shows in the address bar). So why not do something like:
Click here to reply:
reply_$threadid_$username_$encryptedpassword@yourd omain.com
Or build this into the "Reply To" header of the Email. The incoming email address can then be exploded on the underscore and you have it set. As for Spam, It probably won't be much of a problem if you restrict posting to registered members. The vBulletin regististration is shorter than signing up for an egroup or topica account. Plus using vBulletin's security allows you to control access.
Starting new threads are more difficult because you need a mechanism to select a forum. You could redirect them to a custom form with a drop down selection for the forum and have the thread posted there.
Like this:
couple of things:
1) Don't want email reply to links to get too long or they will break apart. So perhaps mailto:threadid_password@forums.com
then the username is determined by the sent from email and the password is matched to that.
Pros : Double checking that it is valid. If someone forwards the message to someone for some reason then it will not work if they reply
Cons : If they try and reply using a different email address. As egroups and topica require this not to happen should not be a problem
2) New threads. I agree problem there. The web idea is ok but one of the most important things is that they do not need to use the web to post.
So you could do at the end of the email:
-- To Post in the General Board
mailto:generaboard_password@forums.com
-- To Post in the Blah Board
mailto:blah_password@forums.com
and that sort of thing. That may work. Only problem is if you have a huge board perhaps, but still this is managable.
3) Sorting out reply stuff.
Going to need lots and lots of checks to make sure that only the new text gets included. Don't want the bottom rubbish, mail headers, large text signautres (very hard) to get included. Also, the problem of when people add a bit of quoted stuff, any way to turn this into (quote) tupe thing. This is not going to be easy i would not think.
4) Advanced Features
--Extra nice things include uploading of email picture attachments and putting them at the end/start of post
ok.. can't think of any more right now!
What do you think?
ok i have been thinking about this more.
Personally i would like to NOT use catch all email if it can be helped (mainly because i use it for something else but i could use a seperate domain if needed).
So it is going to be a matter of putting everything in the subject field. This should not, i hope be a problem.
So it would be something like:
POP3 account (1 needed for EACH forum).
stargate_general@ascifi.com
subject "username_password_threadid"
or
subect "username_password_new-thread"
sort of thing.
An email link in the discussion list would thus be:
mailto:stargate_general@ascifi.com?subject=padders __FG?34sD__3454
make sense?
Do you like this? i prefere it to catch all as easier to manage using subject line. Also means that messages that go to the wrong place (ie replies or no subject line) can easily be bounced back
QUESTIONS:
1) Encrypted password. I someone had an encrypted password could they not easily de-encrypt it if they have a copy of vbulletin? i don't know how it works but i am not sure if it is good it possibly being public is it?
2) Seperator for subject. What should we use? is __ (two underscores ok) if it is part of the username it is going to cause problems so i need a way to prevent usernames having say a double underscore in them.
3) Do most mail programs understand the ?subject= line? any you know that don't?
Any further things? i am going to start working on this once vb2.0 is out. I am already looking for the best info on accessing pop3 accounts etc.
Originally posted by chrispadfield
ok i have been thinking about this more.
Personally i would like to NOT use catch all email if it can be helped (mainly because i use it for something else but i could use a seperate domain if needed).
So it is going to be a matter of putting everything in the subject field. This should not, i hope be a problem.
So it would be something like:
POP3 account (1 needed for EACH forum).
stargate_general@ascifi.com
subject "username_password_threadid"
or
subect "username_password_new-thread"
sort of thing.
An email link in the discussion list would thus be:
mailto:stargate_general@ascifi.com?subject=padders __FG?34sD__3454
make sense?
Do you like this? i prefere it to catch all as easier to manage using subject line. Also means that messages that go to the wrong place (ie replies or no subject line) can easily be bounced back
QUESTIONS:
1) Encrypted password. I someone had an encrypted password could they not easily de-encrypt it if they have a copy of vbulletin? i don't know how it works but i am not sure if it is good it possibly being public is it?
2) Seperator for subject. What should we use? is __ (two underscores ok) if it is part of the username it is going to cause problems so i need a way to prevent usernames having say a double underscore in them.
3) Do most mail programs understand the ?subject= line? any you know that don't?
Any further things? i am going to start working on this once vb2.0 is out. I am already looking for the best info on accessing pop3 accounts etc.
The only complex thing for this is getting a script that checks the pop mail. software like majordomo run in the background all the time and monitor what happens.
This is EXACTLY what we need in this product to push it closer to the top. One good (free!) example of this functionality is www.egroups.com now bought by Yahoo!
Egroups doesn't allow me much control and I want to move to another solution, but the lack of this functionality is keeping me from making the move. If this is going to be done, I'd love to know the ETA so I can figure it into my timing.
Thanks...product looks great and I know it will smoke with PHP and MySQL.
ETA no idea, havn't started. Learning about access mail accounts as we speak but don't expect it this month.
Chris,
I have been quitely trying to find a similar solution on my site. I would love to be part of this. I asked about this months ago http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2532 My cries went unheard I am glad there is a sparked interest in this.
You say earlier that this may be a problem for large boards. I do think that this is something that I would hav eto address myself. I currently have 89 areas to cover. Now I own my server and pop3 is not a problem. I am willing to offer up my server as a test bed as well as my pop server as a test bed for this.
Email me if you are interested in doing this. I know we would rather wait on v 2 and that is cool. But, I have been working with a few friends on my spare time trying to conquer this with version 1.1.3 when I had it. Ever since the preaching of the version 2.0 we suspended any trials in this.
This is a great product already and I honestly think that this would push vB up above and beyond all the competitors. As if it is not already there anyways. :)
admin@gmforums.com
will email you tonight, cheers.
A good site is http://www.i-nieuws.vuurwerk.nl/i-questions/index.html
When you send an email with a special ID in it, it will place the message automaticly on the site with that ID.
It's Dutch, but I think you know the idea.
Jan
http://www.icqforum.f2s.com/php/
i wish i did. it appears a lot of the good sites for this are written in french/german
at the moment i am trying to decide whether to use IMAP commands or POP3 access ones. IMAP is easier but the problem is that you have to compile it with PHP that not everyone does (me included). But an extra advantage is that is the protoc used for NNTP access to newsgroups.
POP3 is the other way to go and it is a little harder than i thought, still getting there. Currently running through headers to take out the sections that will be needed.. some progess ;)
Well, you could email the webmaster ofcourse..
Jan
http://www.icqforum.f2s.com/php
I've decided to give this hack a go - so if you have any more comments/suggestions/ideas please post in this thread. I will post a more detailed plan in a day or two once I have it all worked out in my mind :)
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