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]

I've started coding 2.0 and I'll be looking for a few beta testers. I'm changing the method that I decode emails back to beginning with plain text as there are entirely too many different html formats. We would be in constant development at that route

For 2.0, I've already coded in the phrased controlled error messages and will be working on the user options as well as some usergroup / admin options.

[AyeCapn]

i'm in for beta testing

[henrikhansen]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

I'm changing the method that I decode emails back to beginning with plain text as there are entirely too many different html formats. We would be in constant development at that route

Seems like a good priority

[tekguru]

As per the email Chris you can sign me up for testing!

[Tralala]

Another idea I'm hoping you'll consider, Cyricx. I'm wondering if your ambitious hack is overlooking a very simple need, one that would satisfy the demands of a small (about 150-200 users) forum I'm administrating... and many others out there, I'm sure.

Your current mod allows for users to "subscribe" to forums (to receive every thread and post via email) as well as to post via email. Much appreciated. But it does require action on their part... action which is often too much to expect from the less active or less savvy members. That's why the request to allow moderators to set this for them-- or allowing auto-subscription to be the default -- is important. Without that, I fear a user's inactivity will spiral downward, without any email alerts, until they fade into oblivion with no participation at all.

But how about going in the other direction... affording users (in certain usergroups, if necessary) to be able to mass email out announcements to all other registered users, from within the forum interface?

Right now, only Admins can do this, from AdminCP. Under Users -> Send Email to Users. I'd like to afford that privilege to all of my users, without forcing them to "create a thread" (and involving your hack in its current incarnation) to do so.

Match the "from" address to be the same as their confirmed, registered one (and mask them from being able to change it) and it'd be a real winner, in my book.

On my small forum that's exactly what we'd need to finally be able to kick Yahoo! Mailing list to the curb.

In the meantime I have installed Super PM (Mass PM) and enabled it for individual users. But it's not the same -- PM alerts aren't received exactly as emails are (and are often ignored.) And users need to be added individually and manually to be able to use the hack. And that mod, apparently, in need of a vB 3.6.x port anyway. So it's not going to do the trick.

Right now, we're straddling the fence, using Yahoo! for email announcements, and vBulletin for interaction and discussion. It's annoying to me, because the member lists aren't in sync and it's becoming a nightmare to keep straight. Users are getting confused as to why we're maintaining both.

And yet, if someone wants to simply "email all registered users," the only way they can do this now is by using the Yahoo! mailing list. There's no such functionality in vBulletin.



Perhaps this hack may assist, at least for permissions: "Allow Users to eMail other Members" per Usergroup

I haven't seen any mod like this yet, and it would be a major boon for small forums that need the simple functionality of a mailing list. I think if users could have a easy way to blast out emails to all other users (for, say, very important announcements,) while still being able to use the forum as it was originally designed and intended, it would fit the bill for many, many folks hoping to migrate away from Yahoo!'s mailing list. And it leaves just enough incentive for folks to sign up and check out vBulletin, and start getting their feet wet with the forum interface for all other kinds of chat and discussion.

Whaddaya think?

[Cyricx]

I do have plans to enable this to have automatic subscription if the admin wants, that's hoped to be accomplished very soon.

Would that resolve your needs?

You'd be able to have an announcement forum, that all the users are automatically subscribed too. Then the users you wished to be able to create threads could do so and it would send out the email to all your members.

[Tralala]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

I do have plans to enable this to have automatic subscription if the admin wants, that's hoped to be accomplished very soon.

Would that resolve your needs?

You'd be able to have an announcement forum, that all the users are automatically subscribed too. Then the users you wished to be able to create threads could do so and it would send out the email to all your members.

Hmm. I suppose I could work with that. I'll have to give it a try. What I don't like about that is the "FROM" address would be the forum admin's email address I imagine -- alerting the recipient essentially that a thread has been created -- and not from the actual sender. It adds a level of confusion and complexity I was hoping to avoid.

Would it be possible that this "announcement forum" is invisible, only set up as a gateway for the emails to get sent out? (I don't see it as even having to be an "active" forum.)

Also, if I only plan to allow users to receive new threads and replies (and these "announcements") via email ... but not actually POST via email... is the IMAP support still required?

I ask because my webhoster (Dreamhost) doesn't support it, and I'm not really sure we need that component. If a user wants to post, well, they can revisit the forum.

I simply want my users to get informed of posts and announcements via email, so they are kept in the loop about an upcoming event that's being planned for them. They rarely respond, but need to get info from the smaller subset of organizers. So that's why I love the idea of your hack. I'm just hoping it could be used more like a mailing (mass distro) list, sourced by the vBulletin's member database.

[Cyricx]

Tralala,

I'm not really sure I would want to work that level of specialization into this modification. It's not something I would ever use and I see the use of that being very low. Perhaps if I got this mod to my super happy spot where I was proud of it and had nothing else to do, I might work up those tweaks, but it seems that what you are wanting is much more extensive then I could put time into doing at this time.

I'm hoping to truly just replace the yahoo group and similiar type mailing lists.

I think what you are wanting is not what I'm offering here. The bulk of this modification about 90% of it, is handling retrieving emails and putting them into posts. Something your not wanting to do, your just looking for the notification aspect.

[ChurchMedia]

Sorry if this has already been addressed. I couldn't find an answer. This is a brilliant hack and my users are going to love it! I plan on making a sizable donation as soon as I release it to my community.

The problem I am having is that on a reply I get a lot of BBcode that is a mess. New threads (plain or HTML) and plain text replies are fine, but if you use HTML for an email reply the email AND the forum show the messy BBcode.

Did I miss something or is this being worked on? I've attached a screenshot so you can see what I'm getting. I'm using Outlook XP.

Thanks for all your hard work. VERY cool hack. I'll go on strike if you don't get HOTM for this one!

[Cyricx]

Thanks!!

Fixes for that should be included in 2.0 which should be released soon

I'm currently workin on the admin option to enable/disable links in the footer of the emails.

Then I'll work on automatically subscribing members of certain usergroups. Once that is done I'll release 2.0