vb.org Archive - Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email)

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vb.org Archive (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/index.php)

- vBulletin 3.6 Add-ons (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=194)

- - Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email) (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=151222)

Cyricx

07-15-2009 01:33 PM

Mykkal is all good to go :)

FYI to all - If your having problems with missing fields, especially after running any kind of integration script. Go to plugins & products -> product manager -> select UNINSTALL and click go. Then reupload the latest xml in the zip. It appears selecting overwrite does not force vbulletin to run all of the previous version queries.

kevinh

07-17-2009 07:04 AM

Hi Chris,

Ive had EI installed on a small forum for quite a while and found it made a significant difference in participation rates, particularly as most of the users were accustomed to an old style mail list.

The only problem is I have a couple of users who regularly edit the reply email and/or try to use quote tags but stuff it up, the result being very messy emails going out to the subscribers and me having to tidy up the posts on the web site.

I would like to have the posts from these users moderated. I have created another usergroup which requires posts to be moderated but when someone in the group posts using EI the post still goes out to the subscribers and still gets published in the forum.

It seems to bypass the moderation requirement. Any ideas why?

Cyricx

07-17-2009 03:41 PM

At the time of writing this I hadn't figured out how to require the moderation. It's going to take alot of rework as right now the cron file checks the emails, sends the post and sends the emails out.

I'll have to separate those steps, but it's in the plans and in the works.

One of the parts of the next version will be hopefully getting it to work with moderation.

Also, it'll be using the php pear package for mail mime decode so that should help clean things up as well.

kevinh

07-18-2009 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyricx (Post 1850615)

At the time of writing this I hadn't figured out how to require the moderation. It's going to take alot of rework ....

Thanks for responding so quickly. Looking forward to seeing the new version in due course.

Kevin

toivo

09-23-2009 06:10 AM

Here is a rough quick-fix of patches to EI Mod to support moderated forums, cloned from the existing code of EI Mod. The patch modifies emailintegration.php and two of its plugins, adds two custom hooks to moderate.php and installs a product with four plugins.

In limited testing under 3.6.8 this patch allowed moderation from the Admin Control Panel, Moderator Control Panel and also inline moderation :)

Toivo

lbernstein

09-25-2009 06:50 PM

I'm running EI ver 2.6.1 on 3.8.2. EI is the only mod on the system and was installed months ago. In the last few days I've had 3 posts that will duplicate themselves when posted to the forum (and emailed out). The only change to the system is an occasional error 2006 due to some SQL issues on my host's side. No other changes to the board have occurred for months.

I know there was a problem with duplicate emails in the past that I thought was cleared up in the most recent release.

Any ideas why?

angeljs

10-01-2009 03:06 PM

Hi, this mod seems perfect for my site, but when trying to set it up I receive the following error:

Gateway Time-out

The gateway did not receive a timely response from the upstream server or application.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I'm presuming it's more to do with my server than your mod? :(

jdj	10-06-2009 01:34 PM

Hi there. Another newbie here.

You're all ahead of me here. So far I've installed CyricX original version and I'm excited by the idea. What happens to me though is that we put a test post onto the forum, we get the notification and test reply, the cron picks up the reply and sends back to the forum. Then the same reply goes back and forth in a loop. Now I'm guessing it must be something I've stuffed up in installing due to my ignorance and inexperience but if anyone has any clues that would be helpful. :)

toivo

10-06-2009 09:39 PM

The EI reads each message from the mailbox and then deletes it, therefore messages are not posted more than once. However, if you turn the debug switch on in the beginning of emailintegration.php, messages are not deleted.

Did you create a new mailbox for your forum? It is essential to have a separate mailbox for each forum.

jdj	10-07-2009 02:26 PM

Yes I set up a separate dedicated domain and mailbox specifically for the emails to and from the forum. Emails go to the mailbox, cron picks them up and posts back to forum, then it just keeps going around in a loop. I'm not using 3.6 though, I'm using 3.8.2 at present. Don't know whether that makes a difference. Guessing it's a mistake I've made somewhere.

I'll go back and check the debug thing. Thanks for the idea.

lbernstein

10-07-2009 04:01 PM

My duplicates are very random and don't seem to happen in any particular forum or associated with any individual user. Just had another this morning and had to lock off the thread. Not sure how to troubleshoot this problem. I don't think I checked off the debug option when installing, and not sure how to check that at this point.

angeljs

10-09-2009 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by toivo (Post 1581411)

Hi Kevin,

Here is the code, working under vB 3.6.8. Replace the variables $forum_url and $cron_url.

The script reads the home page, extracts the cron.php with the parameters from the result and then sends a request for cron.php which runs the scheduled task(s).

Check the results from the vB back end to adjust the interval in your crontab or Windows scheduler, depending on which other cron jobs your site has.

Code:

<?php

/**

 * @forum_read.php

 * @20080723 toivo@totaldata.biz

 * reads the forum home page and triggers cron jobs to run

 * tested on vBulletin 3.6.8.

 * requires php >= 4.3.0

 */



$forum_url = 'http://example.com/testvb/index.php';

// cron url from <img src=

$cron_url = 'http://example.com/testvb/cron.php?';



// access forum

$run_status = forum_read($forum_url, $cron_url);

return;



function forum_read($forum_url, $cron_url) {

//  read file contents

  $page = file_get_contents($forum_url);

  if ($page === false) {

            $msg = "forum_read.php unable to read ".$forum_url;

            error_log($msg);

            return false;

  }

// find cron.php

  $cron_start_pos = strpos($page, $cron_url);



  $msg = '';

  if ($cron_start_pos === false) {

            $msg = "forum_read.php unable to find cron string";

            error_log($msg);

            return false;

  }



// end of url

  $cron_end_pos = strpos($page, '"', $cron_start_pos);

  if ($cron_end_pos === false) {

            $msg = "forum_read.php unable to find end of cron string";

            error_log($msg);

            return false;

  }

// extract full url string with cron.php

  $cron_url_length = $cron_end_pos - $cron_start_pos;

  $cron_full_url = substr($page, $cron_start_pos, $cron_url_length );

 //  read cron.php with parameters

  $page = file_get_contents($cron_full_url);

  if ($page === false) {

      $msg = 'forum_read.php '.$cron_full_url." : - PROBLEM?";

            error_log($msg);

            return false;

  }

  return true;

}

?>

If you are going to run it from Unix/Linux, a shell script similar to the following can be scheduled to run from a crontab entry:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

# load forum home page and read cron.php

php /root/forum_read/forum_read.php

exit 0

In Windows, you can run the script from a command file through the Windows scheduler.

Regards,
toivo

So would I have to set this up as a seperate cron job? Which command would I use for the cron and how often would it have to run? I'm a cron newbie, so any help would be appreciated. ;)

toivo

10-09-2009 08:14 AM

Assuming that you are going to run the shell script which runs the PHP command line script, you need to create a new job in crontab. Details of the syntax can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron#crontab_syntax

You may want to run the PHP script once every 5 to 15 minutes and experiment with the speed of response which also depends on the frequency that the Email Integration job in the Scheduled Task Manager in vBulletin has been set to run.

angeljs

10-10-2009 06:16 AM

Ok, thanks for all the help...I'll give it a go :)

lbernstein

11-09-2009 03:42 PM

HELP!!!
I''m once again having duplicate messages going out. I'm not sure how to troubleshoot the problem. Can anyone help?

amphicar770

12-03-2009 05:45 PM

Will this mod be ported to VB4.0? I can not updgrade before that time or I will have a user revolt on my hands!!

AyeCapn

12-03-2009 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amphicar770 (Post 1924848)

Will this mod be ported to VB4.0? I can not upgrade before that time or I will have a user revolt on my hands!!

I'm in the same boat with this and a few other mods. It's become core functionality fora group of my users.

amphicar770

12-08-2009 02:01 PM

Looks like Cyricx has not been on-line here since September. That is not a good sign!!

I can only ibegin to imagine the time and skill that must go into developing something like this mod. I made 2-3 contributions over the past 2 years. I do hope other users have done the same, it is critical to encouraging continued development and support.

toivo

01-20-2010 09:04 PM

Quote:

Will this mod be ported to VB4.0?

Quote:

Looks like Cyricx has not been on-line here since September

Check out today's post by Cyricx at https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...169247&page=15.

I am happy to contribute, I have produced a couple of fixes and also cloned the EI Mod plugins to support moderated forums: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...151222&page=67

toivo

02-11-2010 08:28 PM

A patch for moderated forums tested with 3.8.4 is now available from https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1980256

Toivo

rlopez

02-15-2010 06:35 PM

I have this mod installed and have modified it to work with moderation. When a moderator approves a post the emails are being sent using the mailqueue. There are roughly 700 users who are setup for instant email notification for the forum. My site is then slow and unresponsive until all the emails in the mailqueue have been sent.

Has anyone had similar issue or possible fixes? I did not see any previous posts relating to this but might have missed them considering there are 60+ pages of posts on this thread.

Thanks

toivo

02-27-2010 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by toivo (Post 1889280)

Please note that the 3.8.4 version of this patch (at https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1980256 post #234) incorrectly adds the signature of the original author of the thread to moderated replies sent by email, instead of the signature of the poster of the reply.

As a workaround, you can remove the signature from the email template for replies. The users seem to have a signature in their emails in any case. I am using the old format - by popular demand.

gamingaccess

02-28-2010 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amphicar770 (Post 1927273)

So do you know if this plugin or a similar plugin is developed for new latest versions of vBulletin?

vBulletin 3.8 continues to release patches and updates, and vBulletin 4 was released.

I will really like to know if there is a similar plugin like this in active development

Thanks a lot

toivo

03-10-2010 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlopez (Post 1983170)

I run this mod with my moderation patch in one unmoderated and one moderated forum under vB 3.8.4. I noticed the same slowness with 200 users, email batch size 100. After our mail proxy server (MailEnable free version) rejected 16 valid addresses without giving an error code, I reduced the batch size to 20 and have not seen rejections since. The site also seemed to become responsive again quicker after the moderated message has been approved.

jdj	04-16-2010 04:45 PM

I'm running 4.0.3.

Any news on if this mod will be developed for 4.0.3?

Jah-Hools

04-25-2010 08:33 PM

Could moderators or admin somehow use this as an admin accessible only feature?

To help them admin / moderate quickly via email? (mobile phones, avoiding using the browser)

I daydream that might have minimal server load - and keep the rest of the membership looking at banner ads etc..

Anyone doing that..?

Selective user groups and forums only..?

Sort of a VIP only service?

Thanks in advance..

jdj	05-05-2010 10:06 AM

My interest in this is because the people who use vbulletin.org or vbulletin.com are not representative of people in the wider world. Lots of those people can just about use an email client and email and a mod like this would be a stepping stone into online forums, to get them engaged with something better. Also, lots of people now use handhelds of one sort or another that are quite capable of dealing with email and SMS, even though browsing on them is much less of a positive experience than browsing from a netbook, laptop or desktop of some kind, especially if you are using mobile broadband, which is often slow meaning that pages load slowly even if you can send and receive emails. So the option to be able to contribute to an online discussion you are interested in wherever you are is still a way of keeping people engaged with you.

vilhiem

05-18-2010 06:22 PM

Any news on whether this will work with vB4 ...?

Thanks!

jdj	05-19-2010 08:56 AM

I have previously asked the same question. I tried it with 3.8.4, couldn't quite get it to work consistently, then moved to vB4. I contacted the developer who sent me a polite and apologetic reply along the lines of him having to develop other more popular mods first. I don't think the issues were insurmountable; it was something to do with email parsing.

skippybosco

09-04-2010 11:54 AM

Perhaps we can pool resources and pay to get the issues resolved by the developer to ensure support for vB4+

BigJohnny

09-05-2010 11:25 AM

does anyone have this fully working on 3.8?

I installed the 2.6.1 version a while ago, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why it won't pull emails from the inbox and post them back to the board.....that's the ONLY problem I'm having.

jdj	09-07-2010 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skippybosco (Post 2093640)

Perhaps we can pool resources and pay to get the issues resolved by the developer to ensure support for vB4+

I made a contribution to the developer earlier this year. Spring I think, sometime ago anyway. He was then busy updating his other mods. I'm still interested in this but if you make a contribution how do you know that anyone will actually produce something or when? This isn't meant as critical...the replies I got from the developer were both polite and friendly. I just made a contribution to indicate that I was interested.

I did wonder whether I should try something else. Somebody said to me recently that php bb and Wordpress both support email contributions. I don't know whether that's true or not but I remain interested in allowing users to contribute to my board via email. I did wonder whether there was anyway to deploy vB4 alongside wordpress or phpbb as a kind of dummy system alongsided vB4 allowing users who wanted to contribute from remote to contribute to the same database.

skippybosco

09-17-2010 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdj (Post 2095019)

Worse case I'll see if the developer is ok with a split of his Mod to a 4.0 compatible by another developer. That might be a quicker way to go.

amphicar770

09-23-2010 07:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skippybosco (Post 2093640)

Perhaps we can pool resources and pay to get the issues resolved by the developer to ensure support for vB4+

Over the past year or so I send at least two donations in hopes that it would inspire the developer to release a 4.0 version.

At this point it does seem like he has abandoned the effort. Perhaps he will release the code to the public domain and someone else will pick it up.

Like others, this is keeping me from upgrading to 4.0. Unfortunately, the VB team keeps telling us that we do not need this feature!

washingtonboise

11-09-2010 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skippybosco (Post 2093640)

Perhaps we can pool resources and pay to get the issues resolved by the developer to ensure support for vB4+

Agreed, in fact I am seeing a need for some kind of resource pooling for other plugins as well.
If vbulletin.org could implement widgets such as 'pledgie', that could give authors the ability to put a price on development, e.g. "I will develop this for version 4.x as soon as $500 is raised, so far $320 has been raised (updated automatically). Click here to make a donation."

Money talks and it works. Fundage is a primary reason we don't see more free but critical and highly valued stuff getting maintained, or why it gets updated very slowly. Communism has great ideals, but poor work ethic. Capitalism is the path to progress.

At the very least, authors could even link to their website and host their own donation widgets (hint).

frankR

02-19-2011 02:00 PM

I'd like this mod for 4.x as well.

I'm converting from an email group to a forum and many users aren't happy. This email option would help.

kevinh

02-20-2011 02:14 AM

I used Email Integration successfully on a 3.x site when migrating people from an old fashoined mail list. It served it's purpose well, but a year or so down the track we have now turned it off because it does have it's drawbacks. These include server load and the inability to moderate posts by email. Also, having a new post automatically go out to all subscribers almost immediately after the post can be a real problem if the post is innappropriate or spam. There's also a bit of an admin overhead because people don't understand how it works and are incapable of following instructions :)

I don't use vB 4, I'm still on 3.6, but I have just found another solution. I installed this https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...ighlight=sorky which adds an RSS feed to each forum and sub forum, (this may already exist in vB 4.x)

My site has a primary level forum (which doesn't actually act as a forum), then about 8 sub forums. So I republish the RSS feed for the primary/parent forum as an email "newsletter" through feedblitz.com and give our forum members the link to the Feedblitz sign up page for the email newsletter. You can tell Feedblitz to check for new posts in the RSS feed daily, 8 hourly, 4 hourly or "express" which is the most frequent. Every time there is a new post in one or more of the sub forums the subscribers get an email.

With the users' permission you can import them as subscribers into your Feedblitz account.

There is unfortunately a cost for using Feedblitz depending upon the number of susbcribers. A free alternative (the on free one I know if) is Feedburner.com (owned by Google) however that only provides a daily email to subscribers.

I hope this helps.

jdj	02-21-2011 05:20 PM

Q. "....So I republish the RSS feed for the primary/parent forum as an email "newsletter" through feedblitz.com and give our forum members the link to the Feedblitz sign up page for the email newsletter."

Not sure this would work for me because it's being able to reply by email that my users are asking for. I suspect it would cause issues but I wouldn't want it on all forums....

kevinh

02-21-2011 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdj (Post 2165051)

Not sure this would work for me because it's being able to reply by email that my users are asking for. I suspect it would cause issues but I wouldn't want it on all forums....

Ok, so the RSS solution wouldn't help you, although if users are interested enough they will come to your forums to contribute.

You can enable EI for specific forums, but bear in mind there are other issues. One is that many people who are accustomed to a mail list will never come to the forums site, they only communicate with the site by email. Also EI does not work well when people try to post by email from a smart phone (i.e iPhone or Blackberry).

For some reason with iPhone mail EI cannot determine where the new post ends, so you will find that people will post their new message followed by the message they received by email. There are also character and formatting issues. Here's an example; http://www.bristolcars.info/forums/b....html#post2444

I was forever "tidying" posts up, otherwise the problem just snowballs when more people post by email.

Also, I found that the ability to post by email encourages people to make stupid posts, probably because it's just so easy to do.

People sometimes accidentally create a new thread by email when replying to an existing thread (because they change the subject line so EI doesn't know to append the post to an existing thread).

So EI has it's pros and cons. It may be a moot point anyway unless you can find someone to develop it for vB 4.x :)

misticjeff

02-28-2011 08:28 PM

Hi Guys,

I read through about 20 pages of this thread but cannot find an answer and don't have the patience to go through the other 50 pages.

My issues:

Got the mod working last night, tested it and it worked.

Then another admin posted a reply via email and for the past 6 or so hours, that post continues to repeat itself over and over, emailing itself.

Second issue is that i've tried starting a thread by emailing it and it does not seem to be working.

Any suggestions??

Thanks

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