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

[AzzidReign]

This is a great idea, but I'd rather have the people coming back to my site to reply to threads in hopes that another thread title will catch their attention and to get them more active on my site.

[FleaBag]

This is fab, and there is one thing that will turn this to another level IMO.

Would it be possible for this to receive email attachments (images) and attach them to the new posts? This would allow anyone with an MMS phone to email their Media Message to the forums/site e.t.c.

Keep up the good work, thanks!

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by FleaBag

This is fab, and there is one thing that will turn this to another level IMO.

Would it be possible for this to receive email attachments (images) and attach them to the new posts? This would allow anyone with an MMS phone to email their Media Message to the forums/site e.t.c.

Keep up the good work, thanks!

This is planned for the next few betas after I've got some bugs fixed. I plan on having a global on/off for accepting attachments and a on/off for accepting all attachment types (for example, for forwarded emails) or restricting it to only allowed image types like images

Originally Posted by AzzidReign

This is a great idea, but I'd rather have the people coming back to my site to reply to threads in hopes that another thread title will catch their attention and to get them more active on my site.

True.. the problem that we as forum lovers run into is that there are many people that due to evil work environments can only access email during the day and rarely check anything else. This is the group that LOVES mailing lists and email groups. We are missing out on a whole nother level of interaction in users with this group. If we can bring these people into the fold as well, then we increase the posts on the forums, the stuff to read, and likely convert a few of those mailing list lovers to forum readers

[quiklink]

Eagerly awaiting this mod to reach a stable point!

[henrikhansen]

True.. the problem that we as forum lovers run into is that there are many people that due to evil work environments can only access email during the day and rarely check anything else

So true, content is king, and if people can post in working hours by replying emails,
forum activity will certainly increase. Furthermore, the awareness of the existence of
the forum will increase.

[Cyricx]

The next beta version will be released soon. It looks like I was actually able to totally remove the file edits!

I'm working on a new width bug I found with the messages, and then I'll work on the usergroup bug. The usergroup is the big one, but if the messages look like crap, it hardly matters how well it works

Just wanted to give you all an update

[raiderlax]

This looks sweet, please get this out of BETA, please

[tokenyank]

subscribed!

Something this big, I don't wanna use beta!

[Bob Ricci]

That's a great thought. But in practice we lose a lot of visitors to Yahoo Groups because they like getting emails and they reply to the email. I am waiting for this hack to be completed and I will donate to the cause.

Originally Posted by FleaBag

This is fab, and there is one thing that will turn this to another level IMO.

Would it be possible for this to receive email attachments (images) and attach them to the new posts? This would allow anyone with an MMS phone to email their Media Message to the forums/site e.t.c.

Keep up the good work, thanks!

[Cyricx]

Thanks for the support gang

I haven't released the next beta yet as I'm hoping to jump straight to a solid version. I've fixed both the blank bug, and the quote boxes, as well as I have recoded almost all of the code that I had permission from RedTyger to use.

I'm left with Attachments and Forum Permissions. Attachments should be quick and easy. The share class file that I'm using (same one that Colin used) already pulls out the attachments from the message, so I just need to add a few catches in there for those that don't want to allow attachments and for those that want to restrict the type of attachments

Getting close!!