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

[rustybones]

Originally Posted by txspaderz

I see your using an IP as your mail server. Is that what you would use in Outlook / Outlook Express or any other POP3 reader? Try the DNS form of that IP and see if that helps!

I tried the DNS as well but no joy same error. This mail server is also a Microsoft Exchange server if that is of any relevance?

[txspaderz]

Microsoft Exchange Server's don't allow POP3 do they? You can only use Outlook / Web Access to access the server don't they?

[Renada]

Originally Posted by txspaderz

Try sending from the web-based email. (I take it Pocomail is a form of email program like Outlook or Thunderbird). The mod might not be able to 'read' pocomail's email format correctly.

Does your server have IMAP available? I set mine on pop3 and it worked, however I do know my host has IMAP turned on, as I can setup an IMAP email account and connect through my Outlook.

Ok sending a reply via webmail worked It was very screwy with the formatting though and doesn't appear to like the BB Code Manager mod. Also the line above the signature came through as =3d =3d =3d etc lol!

Yes, my server has IMAP available and I too have set mine back to Pop3.

Getting closer though

Regards,
Renada

[InTheBox]

Originally Posted by txspaderz

Microsoft Exchange Server's don't allow POP3 do they? You can only use Outlook / Web Access to access the server don't they?

Depends on how the server is setup they also do pop3 and imap but you may have to configure them as they dont activate those 2 out of the box with a default install.

[txspaderz]

Sweet, thanks for the clarification!

[rustybones]

Originally Posted by InTheBox

Depends on how the server is setup they also do pop3 and imap but you may have to configure them as they dont activate those 2 out of the box with a default install.

Yeah after further investigation both the POP3 and IMAP virtual servers on our Exchange server are currently NOT running... so I'm guessing that would be why the script can't open the stream.

Now my question is, which one is more useful/better? IMAP or POP3?

[Cyricx]

Currently I've only tested this on IMAP enabled servers as it uses imap functions to fetch the headers and email info. To change this all that has to be done is one line of the php.ini file uncommented out and the php recompiled if I recall correctly

I'm lookin into both renadas and txspaderz errors and working to discover what those issues may be

[Cyricx]

Okay the

imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream

Error is most commonly due to the wrong connection type being chosen. If you get this error, try changing the type to one of the other 6 and rerunning the cron manually.

I suggest ONLY setting the settings up for one forum til you know what the settings need to be to work for your server

Otherwise, you could have one forum set wrong, and another set write, yet be getting frustrated by the error message that isn't going away

Also!!!

NOTE! You must have a separate mailbox for each forum you wish to be enabled! Just like yahoo groups each have a different email address

The reason for this is to significantly increase the end user's ability to create a new thread by just sending an email with whatever title and message they want to the mailbox, which will then be grabbed by the cron and posted as a new thread

[Cyricx]

Updated to 1.4

All confirmed bugs have been squashed and beaten with a very big twinkie!

[txspaderz]

This thing rocks! Great job kind sir!