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

[vocoder]

thanks for the answers!

I get an error when trying to install the product:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

### INSERT QUERY GENERATED BY fetch_query_sql() ###
INSERT INTO plugin
(`active`, `executionorder`, `title`, `hookname`, `phpcode`, `product`)
VALUES
('1', '5', 'Quote template', 'cache_templates', '$globaltemplates = array_merge($globaltemplates, array(\'bbcode_quote\'));', 'emailreplyint');

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'executionorder' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054

These are the only fields in my plugin table:
pluginid
title
hookname
phpcode
product
devkey
active

Do I need to upgrade to the latest version of vb for this to work?

[Tralala]

I have just installed and am in the process of testing this baby out. Very excited.

For the most part the reason I love this new hack is that it allows for the posting of threads and replies via email. My users will really appreciate it.

I previously had RedTyger's code installed "Instant new thread notification" -- and I notice you used that code in the process of developing this new one. Now when I go to Forum Tools -> Subscription Type, I see two identical entries under Notification type called "Instant Notification by email."

No problem, I go into AdminCP and disable the previous hack by RedTyger, and now one of them is gone from the Subscription Type pulldown. But I realize that means users can no longer subscribe to instant notification of "new threads only." And I'd like to retain that option, if possible. So perhaps for a future version, this hack could offer two types of subscription:

-Instant notification by email of new threads only
-Instant notification by email of new threads and all replies

I request this simply because the way my forum is structured, the 2nd option might be too much for some folks and will ultimately flood their email inbox, scaring them away. The 1st option, of course, is enough to keep them in the loop of new topics and announcements, and may even entice them to login to the forum and be more active via the web.

Thanks for the consideration. I suppose I could go in and rename these things myself to get them to coexist peacefully... but figured I'd request it for the benefit of others.

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by vocoder

thanks for the answers!

I get an error when trying to install the product:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'executionorder' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054

Do I need to upgrade to the latest version of vb for this to work?

Vocoder - You'll either need to upgrade, or edit the product xml file and change all of the <plugin active="1" executionorder="5"> to just <plugin active="1">

Vbulletin 3.6 added executionorders to the plugins which is something 3.5 didn't have.

Hypothetically, this modification should work on 3.5, but I'm only offering support for 3.6 boards due to the complexity of the modification.

Originally Posted by Tralala

Thanks for the consideration. I suppose I could go in and rename these things myself to get them to coexist peacefully... but figured I'd request it for the benefit of others.

You've got some kick ass ideas!! Thank you!!!

I had planned on a future version getting this to coexist with subscribed forums/threads. So if you subscribed to a thread that email integration was turned on in, you would be able to reply to the email you get for subscribed threads , and it's definatley in my brain for a future version.

The new thread only thing is kick ass as well! And should not be hard for me to code at all! I'll add it to my list and it should make it into 2.0

I want to let 1.x ride a little bit to find out what other email programs are not behaving well before I start on 2.0 though

Keep the suggestions coming!!

[vocoder]

yeah, I went and upgraded to the latest vB and it installed just fine.

When a new post is created, it sends out the email just fine, however when I reply to that email, it never shows up in the forum. I'm using Exchange for the email server, and have IMAP enabled, but still think there may be some problem with that setup....is there a good way to test?

I'm just wondering if when it sends the email, is it also using the imap server that is specified for the forum, or is it perhaps using localhost (vb is running on a linux server with mail)

[Tralala]

Okay, so I set up a new mailbox on my server and confirmed that I could email to it, as well as check it. (BTW, a good free web tool to confirm this is Mail2Web.)

I know my email hoster supports POP3 and IMAP because I have set up regular email accounts and clients using both over the years.

But, with this hack, I chose POP3, and then just ran the cron job manually and got this error:

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Undefined Function

If you get the error the below error you will need to enable IMAP support on your server. If you host your own server, check your php.ini file, the line for imap support will be commented out. If you do not host your own server, request your host to enable this.

• Fatal error: Call to undefined function: imap_open() in
  /*****/includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 70

I was afraid that might happen.

Originally Posted by Cyricx

To verify if you have IMAP installed go to your admincp -> Maintence -> View Php Info and you should see something like this:

imap

IMAP c-Client Version 200X

Sure enough, I looked in there and didn't see anything listed about "imap."

Just wondering, is enabling IMAP support necessary even if we've chosen POP3 in the Forum Manager prefs? I ask this because getting my webhoster to do anything, even as simple as enabling the line for imap support, is often an uphill battle.

[vocoder]

I ran the cron and seem to be getting the

Call to undefined function imap_open() in /var/www/bb/includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 70

error. I recall seeing posts about this here, I'll look to see what is causes this.

[Tralala]

One more question. When emails are fetched from the mailbox to be posted, are they deleted from the mailbox, too? (Just asking because I don't want to see that mailbox be filled up eventually.)

[Tralala]

Originally Posted by vocoder

I ran the cron and seem to be getting the

Call to undefined function imap_open() in /var/www/bb/includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 70

error. I recall seeing posts about this here, I'll look to see what is causes this.

See the FAQ in post #2.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....90&postcount=2

[vocoder]

okay, I enabled the php imap extension...now i am getting different errors. it looks as though its trying to use the POP3 port instead of hte IMAP port, even though I have IMAP selected?

It should be using port 143, right, not 110? these are the errors i now get:

Warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream {mail.mymailserver.com:110/pop3/notls}INBOX in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 70

Warning: imap_headers(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 73

Warning: imap_close(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 807

EDIT: my settings are correct, I tested it with thunderbird IMAP just to doublecheck. and it works fine with thunderbird. I think it has to do with the port.

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by Tralala

One more question. When emails are fetched from the mailbox to be posted, are they deleted from the mailbox, too? (Just asking because I don't want to see that mailbox be filled up eventually.)

Yes on each loop of reading each message, either when it gets an error or when it completes the process of working with that email it marks it to be deleted. Then just before it closes that mailbox, it deletes all those emails

Originally Posted by vocoder

okay, I enabled the php imap extension...now i am getting different errors. it looks as though its trying to use the POP3 port instead of hte IMAP port, even though I have IMAP selected?

It should be using port 143, right, not 110? these are the errors i now get:

Warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream {mail.mymailserver.com:110/pop3/notls}INBOX in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 70

Warning: imap_headers(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 73

Warning: imap_close(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 807

EDIT: my settings are correct, I tested it with thunderbird IMAP just to doublecheck. and it works fine with thunderbird. I think it has to do with the port.

Please try the other options such as with official and self signed certificate as well.

There are 3 different pop3 and 3 different imap connections due to the varied kinds of ways people can setup their servers

To your previous question, the emails being processed to the forum are controlled through the cron job, if the cron cannot connect, it will not process those emails

however, it will still send out emails when someone posts from the forums.