Posting by E-Mail!
 

That's right, you can now e-mail posts to this forum, and they will be added to the thread automatically!
This means that when receiving notifications to thread you subscribed (this was revamped as well; the post text is in the e-mail now), you can reply to that e-mail with your post without even visiting the thread. :) Obviously this is useful if you don't want to update your session (which will cause all post markers to go off) but still have an urgent reply.

To increase security, each and every one of you got a new e-mail password. This password is used when replying through e-mail, so people can't spoof e-mail headers and pretend to be you. Keep this password private as you keep any other!
This e-mail password can be found in your profile, just go to User CP => Profile, and look at the bottom. Currently it's a random string, feel free to change this to your own password. Note that this password is not kept encrypted in the database as it's send to you with every notification. (this is also why I didn't use your normal password)

To post to a thread, you need to e-mail post@vbhacks.com, and include a string in the subject line.
If you have the threadid of the thread, you write this: [thread-threadid-emailpassword]. The rest of the subject will be the title of your post, and the body of your e-mail will be the message. The latter must not be empty.
If you have the postid, you write this: [post-postid-emailpassword]. The above applies here as well.

Of course, permissions are checked when you try to post, so don't try to do some funky stuff -- you will get an error e-mail in return. :) After your post is processed (should be quite, depends) you will receive a confirmation e-mail with a link to your post.

Here is how a typical notification e-mail looks like now:
Anyway, I hope some of you find this new feature helpful. I personally don't think I will ever use it, but that's just me. :p

Good day,

Will you be posting the code so we can use it on our own forums? :)

No.

this is what i requested a couple weeks ago :)

hmm btw can you tell me how you get the db automaticly update when you get a mail on a certain email adress, is there any kind of tutorial for this?

Wow, great addition FireFly! I don't think i'll use it, but it seems like an amazing addition for the 10,000+ members here. Great job! :smoke:

This could come in handy while I'm at work and can't afford to start a session. :)

That's a shame that the code will not be posted.......

I've looked for ways to combine a traditional mailing list and vB, and this looks like a good start.......

:cry:

JC

Has anyone ever figured out how to assign an email address to a particular forum? I'd like to be able to do this so I can send messages to a forum by email.

This would be useful for archiving email list conversations. Just subscribe the forum's address and you have an automatic archive.

Simple?

:cool:

That was straight out.

this is a very useful feature Chen
it should be released IMO :(

]could be used to spam your forums...
I understand why FireFly wont release it...
+vb.org is something special and should not look like other boards around... got idea? ;)

A feature like this would most probably have a daemon running to update the threads, therefore the support for such a 'hack' would be too hard for even Firefly!

While its a good idea, i dont believe its worth it, it just lets users post without visiting your site, so your hitcounts dont go up, less revenue from banners, less hits for your statistics.. etc..

It doesn't need to use a daemon :)

i like the complicated (and full of tech terms) answer that firefly gave.. hehe. :D

Excellent idea! I really like this and will be using it often; I often don't have time to stop by halfway through the week and visit all the forums and read new posts as I'd like to, so this gives me a lot of flexibility since I check my e-mail often. :)

It would be great, when you post the hack :cool:

Maybe this is something they're working on for Version 3 and that's why it won't be released as a mod ???

I think it's about support and configuration. Chen would be innundated with complaints cause peoples config would not work as this would involve setting up an email address, etc.....

But I hope (wink, wink) someone picks it up and runs with it. I run a large group which has evolved into some sub-regional groups who use Yahoo groups to send notices and such, this would be perfect for me :)

JC

Me too. It would be a very neat mod!

Though I suppose I can also see the problem of losing web traffic / revenue if everyone started using it.

it most likely something in vb3.. but it takes me to long to check my emails now a days.. and I hate getting like 400 emails from the vb sites saying there is a new reply... it makes me wish I had my penuckel

I would use it ONLY for creating a BBS-based archive of a few email-lists I run. In other words, one-way only into a read-only BBS forum.

I'm looking forward to this functionality as a built-in feature of 3.x (hopefully) so I don't have to code my own and end up inadvertently tieing myself down to a particular version of VB.

Keep up the good work, all.

Very very cool idea. Hopefully will be standard in the vB3.

Let me see if I have this straight. :confused:


So now I get a email from everyone who replies to a thread that I am subscribed too instead of just one email telling me there may be more posts but I have to visit.

Example....today I participated in a thread and subscribed to it, an hour later I had three emails waiting for me from the people who posted to it without me every visiting the thread.

Hmmmmmm.....I sort of like the "just one" email, since now if a thread explodes my in- box will be flooded with mail from the thread.

Mike

Really?

Then is the message just processed next time a page is loaded?

Im curious how you get it happening if it doesnt use a daemon of some kind :)

merk: you can directly spool the result from sendmail/procmail/qmail etc.. to a php script when ever a email is received for a particular address or block of addresses :)

Whilst you do still have the mail daemon running you don't need any other daemons.

Or there's always cron :)

Ah, it makes sense now :)

Thanks

I always thought you could do something like that, but its a bit hard on a shared server :\

I just tried to reply via email and it didn't work in this forum!!

Anyway, I am still looking for a mod that enables me to send an email to a forum. When that email enters the forum it creates a new thread.

[m]
:pirate:

It didn't work for me, either. Do you *have* to include a post title? I didn't, I'm wondering if that's why it didn't work.

Can anyone confirm or deny that something like this hack is on the board for v3 or later? If nothing else as an option?

I dont think anyone is entirely sure of what will be in version 3...

I would definately like to see something similar to this in vb3...

It would be worth its weight in Gold...

Satan

We would like this feature in our forums!

This is HUGE for using email Pagers like
the Motola T900 or Rim.

Please consider releasing this for all of us.

the thing most people don't seem to realize is that this isn't a feature that all of you will be able to use on _your_ forums... in fact, i bet less than 5% of you could use it.

what you need to actually do something useful is:
correctly set up mx records for your domain
the ability to change the sendmail/postfix/whatever configs to let you pipe email
have a parser that can be run over a CLI

i'm willing to bet most of you have PHP compiled as a module, but you probably have perl installed as well..
.. so then you only need DB, mysql, mime etc. etc modules

a nicely working system like this usually costs a couple of thousand bucks (yes, this is the way most decent web-mail programs work, I've written one myself)

while i strongly disagree with anyone who think this should be released with vb3, i do think it would be a nice gesture to write up a white-paper on how it's done, but differences in different mailer-daemons makes anything beyond abstract notes unuseful
(for instance, extra headers added by sendmail aren't there in postfix & vice versa)

just my $0.02 on this subject ;)
cool idea to use it for the forums though.. i'm impressed :)

[edit]
the point i'm trying to get through is that there is no way for either jelsoft or a hack-author to be able to support this, due to the vast selection of software that can/needs to be used to maintain this[/edit]

and then FireFly answered with No



I truly expected that..... :paranoid:

Someone already released this hack. The reason I don't release it is firmly stated earlier in this thread.

thank you for having worked it out: It makes interaction on this forum much easier.

Hi all,

New around here. Searched for this email hack and was excited to find this thread started by Chen. Disappointed though that it doesn't contain the hack.

Can someone please point me in the direction of where the hack is posted?

Is this as complicated as okidoki suggests? (earlier in this thread)

I participate in a mail list that would be awesome to convert to one that is archived in VB. Wouldn't this hack do that?

Regards,
Rand

I don't know much about it because I haven't installed it, but here's the hack:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...threadid=36899

Thanks FWC,

I'm not a VB owner, yet, so I can't look at or use the hack. Is there a separate discussion thread about the posted hack? (Besides this one...)

I just tried email responding to a thread I started on the Pre-Sales Questions Forum, but it hasn't posted yet. Still think this would be an excellent feature if it works as I imagine.

Thanks again,
Rand

Rand, you need to be licensed in order to get any hack.
purchase VB, then you will gain control of all the vB.org features, by entering your license information.