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

[cgmckeever]

C - just sent it out to you -- it pretty much ripped all the regex and HTML out and pushed everything as plaintext and tried to figure out where URLS should be placed.

[Cyricx]

Rock on, I still had that email saved.

Thanks!

I'm hoping to have some time to dive back into the vbmail thing today.

[doubleclick]

cyricx:
What about the second half of the question?

Originally Posted by doubleclick

can you at least tell me where to comment out the invitation to post new threads and reply via email in the outgoing email to users so they don't? That would be a good bandaid until you get time to finish this.

cgmckeever:
Thanks for the assistance. I've sent you email.

[cgmckeever]

Doubleclick - just PM'd you - didnt get an email

whoops --- posted a comment about how to nuke the footer, but it wouldnt work

[cgmckeever]

Doubleclick -

the footer comes out of a template phrase from the database...

I think if you added something like:

$pattern[3] = "/-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-(.*)-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-/is";
      $replace[3] = "";
      $pattern[4] = "/-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-(.*)-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-=3D-/s";
      $replace[4] = "";
      $mailmessage = preg_replace($pattern, $replace, $mailmessage);

right after:

$text_message = str_replace("\\'", "'", addslashes(iif(empty($email_text['emailbody']), $emails['-1']['emailbody'], $email_text['emailbody'])));

It _should_ wipe out the footer from the message. You would have to do this for the CRON and PRODUCT xml in I think 4 places (2 per file)

This is untested, but the replace is the same replace that wipes out the footer in replies to posts via email.


C -- maybe an option in EI to disable the footer?

[doubleclick]

Thanks again, cmg. I resent the email to you.

As far as disabling the footer via EI in the future, maybe the option to disable each option individually through the admin panel, rather than a big either/or decision. As it stands, it's nice to have the view thread in forum, homepage, and especially the unsubscibe options remaining and just being able to remove the reply/post from email options.

I'm off to try your new code, cmg. I'll let you know how it goes.

DC

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by doubleclick

Thanks again, cmg. I resent the email to you.

As far as disabling the footer via EI in the future, maybe the option to disable each option individually through the admin panel, rather than a big either/or decision. As it stands, it's nice to have the view thread in forum, homepage, and especially the unsubscibe options remaining and just being able to remove the reply/post from email options.

I'm off to try your new code, cmg. I'll let you know how it goes.

DC

The option to disable the links like calendar and such is worked into the next version. I'll check into adding the others in a future version.

Right now the vbmail problem is gonna make my brain explode.

[doubleclick]

ok. I figured out a simple fix, that even I can deal with.

I went to phrases via the vBulletin Admin Panel, did a search for "you may reply to this email",

I then edited the following English (US) Translation versions

ei_notify_post
ei_notify_post_forum
ei_notify_thread
ei_notify_thread_forum


and then commented out this part of the code following $emaillinks :

<tr> <td align="center">You may reply to this email to post a reply to the forum.<br>You can also begin a new thread by sending an email to <a href="mailto:$foruminfo[ei_replyaddress]">$foruminfo[ei_replyaddress]</a>!</td> </tr>

That removes the part of the footer dealing with reply and starting threads via email. I like this as it retains the rest of the useful features, and when your new fixes eliminate the html code dump and quote boxes, I can just uncomment this out again.


This fix still created quote boxes when clicking the link from the email to reply via the forum, but I can live with it. At least the HTML dump is not there.

I really don't like the redundancy of quote boxes, but realize this is a personal preference and not a global one. I hope you'll consider making quote box creation an option as well, assuming your head doesn't explode in the meantime.

Hope this helps somebody...

DC

[doubleclick]

Well, so far so good. The mod is working for the forum and it seems to be increasing responses.

I just tried to enable it with another usergroup/forum combination, but for some reason, it isn't sending out notifications of posts or replies made in the forum. It does, however, post in the forum if an email is sent to that forum's designated email address.

I set myself as a member of the usergroup that has access to the forum, and selected "instant email notification" for that forums forum options.

I've compared the settings many times for the one that works with the one that doesn't, and can't see what the problem is. Any ideas? I'm sure it's something staring me in the face, but I sure as heck can't see it.

[doubleclick]

One forum is still working, the other one isn't. As far as I can tell, the settings are all correct. Checked the settings for the one that isn't working for about the 10th time, and still can't find what I've missed.

From forum manager, it has the correct usergroup enabled in email integration. Other settings identical to the one that works.

from usergroup manager, it has the correct forum enabled for email reply, both are set to yes
Users are assigned to correct user group. Other settings identical to the one that works.

Users are assigned to the correct usergroup.

Forum permissions are identical for both forums and their respective usergroup.

Finally, if I send email to the forum that doesn't work, it posts the email. However, when a post is made, it doesn't send notification.

More than one forum can do this, right?