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

[Virtex-II]

Nothing happens on my forum, I think I did it all the way it was supposed to be done but I don't receive any email. Can someone please help?

[ChurchMedia]

Man, you ROCK!! This is up and running on my board and almost everything is working perfectly. The only bug I've seen is that is this:

>> Create a new thread by email
>> Put a smilie in it
>> The smilie shows up fine in the forum
>> When you get the email back the smilie is a broken link

<img src="images/smilies/smile.gif" border="0" alt="" title="Smilie" class="inlineimg" />

The http://www.yoursite.com/forums/ is missing. This seems to only be on new threads. Replies are fine.

Thanks again. This was money well spent for me.

[alessai]

wut?!!! i think im dreaming

this product make forums in a really newlevel

i have a quastion how can the user subscribe in a froum so he can recevie the threds??

and one more thing i changed my MX (for the email) to domains live so wut am i supposed to put ? pop3 or wut?

[ChurchMedia]

I put together an end-user tutorial for my forum. It's not the best, but here it is:
http://www.churchmedia.net/CMN/vbart...le&articleid=6

[Virtex-II]

Can someone show me an example of how to configure the fields on Forums & Moderators -> Edit ...
Maybe can someone suggest a way to test the system on a private forum before using it for all forums?

Thanks a lot!


Best Regards

[Tralala]

Originally Posted by ChurchMedia

I put together an end-user tutorial for my forum. It's not the best, but here it is:
http://www.churchmedia.net/CMN/vbart...le&articleid=6

Your forum requires registration... can you copy and paste your tutorial here, please? It'd be appreciated...

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by Tralala

Your forum requires registration... can you copy and paste your tutorial here, please? It'd be appreciated...

My permissions were set wrong. I just installed vBarticles. Sorry! Try it again:
http://www.churchmedia.net/CMN/vbart...le&articleid=6

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by Virtex-II

Can someone show me an example of how to configure the fields on Forums & Moderators -> Edit ...
Maybe can someone suggest a way to test the system on a private forum before using it for all forums?

1) Through your website control panel (NOT vBulletin), create an email address that makes sense for the forum (e.g. If it's a forum for PowerPoint, name it powerpoint@yoursite.com).
2) Go to Forum Manager in VB admin CP and choose the forum you want to use the email for.
2) Scroll to the bottom where the Email Integration is.
3) Fill in the blanks and save!

That's it! I attached a screenshot of my setting (has bogus info but it's how it should look). As far as a test forum, I just set up a new forum that only I can see and played around with it to make sure it was working.

[Virtex-II]

Thanks a lot ChurchMedia for your help! Your post and your tutorial (I registered to your forum) cleared all my doubts.

I still have some questions...The links reported on the e-mail seem to be uncorrect (I use OE), for example:

http://www.mydomain.com/forums/subscription.ph%20%20p?do=addsubscription&f=2

the red part doesn't make the link work properly.

All the other links are uncorrect (spaces appear in them) but seem to work right.

When someone tries to answer via email, how long does it take to have the new thread on the forum?

When I run the cron job I get this error:

Email Integration 

Warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream {http://webmaildomini.aruba.it/cgi-bin/webmail.cgi:110/pop3/notls}INBOX in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 111

Warning: imap_headers(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 114

Warning: imap_close(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 1213

or

Email Integration 

Warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream {http://webmaildomini.aruba.it/cgi-bin/webmail.cgi:143/novalidate-cert}INBOX in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 111

Warning: imap_headers(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 114

Warning: imap_close(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 1213

Is there anyway to fix them?

Regards!!!

[ChurchMedia]

I haven't had that first problem. I guess Cyricx needs to answer that one.

For the second problem, make sure you have IMAP installed and running correctly on your server. I just switched to POP3 when I got that error and it works great.

When someone tries to answer via email, how long does it take to have the new thread on the forum?

The cron job to post it to the forums and send emails runs every 10 minutes. There's no way to shorten that (that I know of).

Good luck!