Mail List emulation
 

I've had a request to set up a vB board that the users can decide whether they want to use it like a mail list or like a bulletin board. If they want to use it like a mail list, they should be able to indicated that durring registration and receive all posts via email and respond to posts using email as well. I've seen the hack that allows users to respond to postings from email but can I take it a step further to have certain user groups get every post through email and respond to them? Any ideas would be much appreciated.

JakeC

In other words it is "forum subscribers should get all threads/posts via email" hack

As discussed before, unless you code a wise (= time consuming) algorithm to sent emails distrubuted in time, it wouldn't be a good idea to do it as having a lot of subscribers would slow down thread/reply posting. Say 5000 people asked for this feature. Everytime a reply/thread is sent 5000 people needs to be posted and it can take several minutes as soon as send button is clicked and this delay is unbearable on poster end.

Besides to reply a post via email, you need to have a dedicated server.

No you don't...cron jobs help, though.

I've got the dedicated server. As far as the number of users go, I can't imagine more than at most 1000 members. The list is dedicated to putting Mazda rotary engines in aircraft so it's not going to get huge anytime soon. It would be nice to be able to somehow disconnect the mailings from the postings to keep someone from waiting or punching the button over and over again though.

Would this be something that would be very difficult? Although I have experience implimenting hacks, I really have no coding experience.

JakeC

Logician: Thanks for the great hacks by the way. I've got several employed over at www.homebuiltairplanes.com. You?re a real help.