Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email)

This mod is based off of the Mail Reply modification by Colin F to which I have obtained permission to rewrite and release.

This modification allows you to mimic email lists such as yahoo groups through your forums!

After installing this modification you will have new settings in your forum manager where for each forum you can enable this modification and setup a separate email address to use for each forum that you have this enabled for.

Just like how there is a separate email address for each yahoo group.

After doing so, members can subscribe to each forum that this mod is enabled for to receive notifications for new threads and replies.

Any posts in that forum, will be sent to them via email. (Example email attached below). The users can then reply to that email (which will then be processed and posted to the forums through the cron job that runs every 10 minutes), or they can send a new email to the email address and a brand new thread will be created!

Essentially mimicing an email list! Suddenly those users that hate forums, can still be dragged into the conversations and help keep the forum's activity level up!


BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Confirmed bug that email processing does not handle Japanese characters.

Unsupported Items
These are the items that are not currently supported:

• Some custom bbcode modifications will not display like they do on the forums in the html emails. Like glow, and the table mod.

TO UPGRADE

• Please see the file in the zip for upgrading!! If your upgrading from version 2.3.X you will need to reverse some file edits that are no longer nessecary!

NEW INSTALL

• See instructions in the zip file.

VERSION HISTORY!
(See the file in the zip for a complete history!)

• 2.6 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Joining an unmoderated public group will now auto subscribe you per the usergroup settings.
    • NO CONFLICTS with Instant Thread Subscription! See details in below post.
  • New Stuff
    • User Option Allow Auto Subscribe - This is an admin allowable, user option that let's the user choose to not be auto subscribed.
    • User Option not receive own posts - A new user option that lets them select to NOT receive their own posts via email.
    • Editted the phrase for the Auto Subscription script to tell people what to do if there are no listings.
    • Added error checks when saving a usergroup for if auto subscriptioin is entered with a forumid for a forum that does not have email integration enabled and also checks that the usergroup you are saing is entered in the forum manager as allowed to use email integration.
• 2.6.1 Release (BETA VERSION)
  • Hot Fix
    • It appears I was unseting a variable too soon. I've corrected this and it has resolved the issue with multiple posted replies on my test server.

Most of these will be slow to make it in til I know I've got the code to handle just about every type of email we could receive But in anycase, here are the ideas for future versions!

• End User Option to subscribe to just receive new thread emails, or receive all new thread & reply emails (current version does all new threads & replies).

Thanks to RedTyger, Bob Denny, Ed Kohwley and Chris McKeever for their additions and assistance with portions of this code.

Huge thanks also goes to the many individuals that have helped test various incarnations of this mod.

MAD PROPS TO: cgmckeever for a great quoting regex for the old format, and all the mods at www.4winmobile.com for helping test version 2.4 prior to release!!

You guys rock!

Please feel free to donate to my continued work on this modification!! It let's me spend more time on it!
Make a Donation!

Version 2.6 will work with both 3.6.8 and 3.7!

The #.X versions are the solid tested versions.

The #.X.X versions are the beta versions. New features and bug fixes will be worked in there and then when I have a solid version it'll be released as the next #.X

Thank you!!

~ Cyricx

[kevinh]

First problem (repeat messages) is almost certainly due to messages being left in the forum mail box. If you are using IMAP in "Email Reply Integration Settings" (in Forum settings) - try switching to POP.

Beforehand however, you might want to go into the mailbox using a web client and delete the exisitng messages so you don't further irritate your subscribers

Can't suggest anything for the second problem, other than checking that the message is actually making it into the forum inbox and obviously making sure the sender address is that of a registered user with appropriate permissions.

[misticjeff]

In the forum settings, I had it set to POP... I just tried setting it to IMAP. We'll see what happens.

Regarding the second issue, I'm sending a start new thread email using an approved account, it's going into the mailbox setup for the forum in question but not actually starting a new thread.

Any ideas?

[Cyricx]

mistic, I remember this bug occuring awhile back on my site as well. I thought I had eliminated it in the public release. I'll have to compare code versions to see, but what I remember is that something was causing the processing of script to halt after it had loaded the message to the forum, but hadn't deleted the email. In the next version I'll be saving it to a temporary database table and immediately deleting it to fix but I'll see if I made a quick fix in the 3.6/3.7 code for it. An immediate fix is to go in to your mailbox and delete that hanging message.

A heads up for all I'll be working on this in the next few days to come and dig over what others have found and what I can figure out to get a new release for vb4 sent out.

There is no plans to continue the 3.6 and 3.7 once I've got the 4.x working.

[Bob Ricci]

What versions will this mod work with? We've been patiently waiting...

[Cyricx]

I'll be primarily focusing on 4.x

From what I've heard and read that is the most requested.

[LarryPreheim]

Do you have an updated patch for USERCP_SHELL?

I am running 4.1.3 The edit area now looks like:
<ul class="blockrow">
<li class="{vb:raw navclass.substhreads_listthreads}"><a href="{vb:link subscription, '', 'do=viewsubscription'}">{vb:rawphrase list_subscriptions}</a></li>
<li class="{vb:raw navclass.substhreads_editfolders}"><a href="{vb:link subscription, '', 'do=editfolders'}">{vb:rawphrase edit_folders}</a></li>
</ul>

Thank you.

[Cyricx]

That's actually the part that is kickin my butt right now in the upgrade to 4.x

[ahobilam]

Can anybody tell me, will it work with VB 4.1.5?
or
any other latest mod like this.
I installed it and got Database error.
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in [path]/includes/class_bootstrap.php(1315) : eval()'d code on line 135

Later I uninstalled it, now my forum is working.
Please help.
nvs

[phinphan]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

That's actually the part that is kickin my butt right now in the upgrade to 4.x

Chris - any luck on this. I emailed you about it and will be happy to underwrite some/all of the cost if it can be done. This has become a huge issue on my forum and we are contemplating rewritting the whole site in Drupal or biting the bullet and spending an arm and a leg on Fusetalk which has this already.

[bumper2011]

hi everyone, may I have your help & advice? I have configured & tested the email integration feature. I did receive email when there is new post in the forum. However, there is no reply post if I replied the email with content.

I have enabled the log in Scheduled Task Manager, and tried with a few runs. the log just show "Email Integration results Opened mailbox for <MYFORUM> Invalid email @" or "Email Integration results Opened mailbox for <MYFORUM> No messages found for <MYFORUM>"

I think the "no message" in log is regarded as normal as it deletes the message after grabbing. But why does it say "Invalid email"? what is the possibility of the problem?

thanks.