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

[Cyricx]

Just wanted to drop a quick note...

Autosubscribe will be in 2.0!

Right now it's controlled from the usergroup manager, you set auto-subscribe to yes and enter the forumid's separated by commas of forums that when added to that usergroup the member can access.

The code even handles overlapping usergroups. For example if you have two usergroups that give access to forumids 9,11 it won't count those forumids twice

I'm thinking we need a PM sent to the user to let them know that subscriptions have been added for forums x and x with links to change those settings if they wish, with an admin option to enable/disable the pm.

I also think I need to code a script to update autosubscriptions, which will overwrite any subs people may have so it'll have to be controlled per usergroup so if you change the settings for one usergroup, you can go and readd the auto subs, without adding a ton of subs for the other groups that people may have tweaked and changed.

The update script will have to make it into 2.0, the PMs may make it into the next version depending on how easy they are to code in

[tekguru]

Sounding good Chris, are we anywhere near a test version yet?

[Cyricx]

Very close.

O and the auto sub thing, goes through the class_dm_user so even new members subscribing, or join groups, or admincp, extra, any place you are changing the usergroups will also check for auto subs

[Tralala]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Autosubscribe will be in 2.0!

Right now it's controlled from the usergroup manager, you set auto-subscribe to yes and enter the forumid's separated by commas of forums that when added to that usergroup the member can access.

This is awesome. Thanks so much for this, Cyricx... I think it'll fit my "users announcements" needs nicely now (especially since I've discovered that Super PM doesn't work in 3.6.x )


Just to ask again though, since the question never got answered... if all I'm looking for is for threads and posts to get sent out via email -- but not to allow replies to those posts to be made via email -- can I still install and use this without the IMAP support? I'm assuming yes, just hoping the admin of it all makes sense. (I suppose if I'm not checking a mailbox, the cron never runs, so there's never an IMAP error, yes?)

And, can the emails be phrased so I can customize/remove the extra "reply" text (basically, telling folks that they have to log into the forum to respond?)

Thanks again. :up:

[AyeCapn]

cyricx > *

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by Tralala

Just to ask again though, since the question never got answered... if all I'm looking for is for threads and posts to get sent out via email -- but not to allow replies to those posts to be made via email -- can I still install and use this without the IMAP support? I'm assuming yes, just hoping the admin of it all makes sense. (I suppose if I'm not checking a mailbox, the cron never runs, so there's never an IMAP error, yes?)

And, can the emails be phrased so I can customize/remove the extra "reply" text (basically, telling folks that they have to log into the forum to respond?)

Thanks again. :up:

Yes it can, you'll just need to disable the scheduled task that runs.

Also, the emails are completely phrased. The two you'll need to fiddle with to customize and remove the reply stuff will be "ei_notify_thread_forum" and "ei_notify_post_forum".

Since you are not going to use the email retrieval side of it you will not need imap.

But I must stress to everyone else that will be using email retrieval... be very careful fiddling with those phrases as the cron job looks for

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

and

You can also begin a new thread by sending an email to $foruminfo[ei_replyaddress]!

and cuts everything out between that to remove the signatures and the links from emails and posts. If you mess with either of those or remove them, signatures will get duplicated in posts and emails

But Tralala, since your talking about not using that retrieval, you won't experience any side effects from completely chopping up those phrases to your delight

[Tralala]

Thanks, Cyricx!

This has the makings of being the Best. Mod. Ever...

and *certainly* worthy of MotM! :up:

[Tralala]

Cyricx: I mentioned this earlier and you said you liked the idea. I'd been hoping to continue to give my users the option of getting instant email updates of only new threads, in addition to your hack's "all new threads and replies." (So I'd hoped to keep RedTyger's original hack installed to allow for that.) In the meantime I just tried to make it work myself.

I edited the $vbphrase[instant_notification_by_email] phrase of RedTyger's to read "Instant notifications of new threads only."

I also edited yours -- $vbphrase[email_reply_integration] -- to read "Instant notifications of all new threads and replies" (instead of the default "Instant Notification by email")

Seems like it'll work. I'm hoping this is an easy way to get these hacks to peacefully coexist... and if not, maybe you could include both as options in your hack. Just figured I'd throw it out there to help others with the same hope.

It's also a bit counter-intuitive that to subscribe you go to the forum pulldown, select "Subscribe" and then choose what type... but to *unsubscribe* you can only do so from the UserCP. Ideally we'd be able to unsubscribe from the same forum pulldown... and in the absence of that, unsubscribing would be yet another listing on the "Notification Type" pulldown.

Thanks for the consideration.

[Cyricx]

I'll update the phrase for my next version

I'm deadly close to taking the code I have no to the beta testers, so I think I'll look at the dropdowns and such in 2.5 or 3.0 or whatever. Which shouldn't be far behind the release of 2.0

The phrase change will definately be in the 2.0 as I didn't realize I hadn't flopped those over

Updated - changed the phrase to read

Instant notification by email for new threads and replies

Love the input Tralala! Soon I'll be able to put these great ideas into action!

[Tralala]

Idea for 2.5 or 3.0:

The ability for users to subscribe to individual threads of their choosing (and not whole forums) and receive *all* subsequent replies to said threads.

(The built in vB thread subscription mechanism only sends ONE, with the following disclaimer: "There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again.")