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

[rodneytamblyn]

Thanks Cyricx. I have 50 odd forums so I'll have to go hunting .... Am I alone in finding vB admin control panel a mess? When you have a large number of forums many screens become a nightmare to load in the admincp. But I digress... :-)

[Cyricx]

You should only have to check the usergroups... not the forums

Here is a query you can run from Admincp -> Maintence -> Execute SQL Query that will tell you what usergroup you need to fix

Replace (TABLEPREFIX) with your table prefix you setup in the config file, or remove it if you do not use one.

select * from (TABLEPREFIX)usergroup where ei_auto = 1 AND ei_forumid = '';

[Piggo]

UPDATE: looks like everyting is working as it should now. SWEET!

The only thing I could still imagine would make this PERFECT if there was the ability to RENAME the forums for the purpose of EMAIL SUBJECT only, as discussed earlier.
Would be VERY happy if you can add that ability next update, Cyricx!

[Cyricx]

It will DEFINATELY be in the next version

I gotta solve the bug that Tek is having right now. So far I've narrowed his bug down to admin replying from email causing a duplicate. Trying to narrow down what in his settings could be causing the code to loop twice.

If anyone else experiences this bug please let me know!

Piggo, was the other plugin causing the issue? If so, I'd be happy to look at the code for it and see if I can figure out what was causing them to burp

[Piggo]

Actually it seemed to just resolve itself; ALTHOUGH: it may well be the "admin replying from email causing a duplicate" thing.
Remember I was saying that members had no problems?
The duplicate emails seem only to have happened from admin email accounts.

No admin has sent any email recently, so not sure if it would still happen.


---

GREAT about the renaming forum inclusion in new update!
Thanks so much for this mod, and thanks so much for keeping at it, and making it better (almost daily! )

[Cyricx]

Duplicated it on my test board.

It's when a user replies twice to the same thread in the same loop of the cron job.

This criteria has actually existed since this modification was created! We just haven't seen it yet til now.

I'll work on a fix now.

[Piggo]

Dang you are good!

Now that you write that, I can remember that the loop posts were indeed more than one, and close together timewise!

Sweet!

[Cyricx]

For some reason the floodcheck code works for new threads... but not new replies....

*growl*

Though it all uses the same datamanager.

I'm fighting with it now

[bc3tech]

the link on the product after installation (in the products listing of adminCP) is FUBAR

[Magnum164]

hmm..

So far I have this installed. Ran the debug and it passed. Running 3.7 beta 4. However, I still get the regular email. Nothing in the forum email box. Will keep checking...