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]

No, it's something I haven't been able to incorporate yet.

The biggest brainfart is how I'm going to have people define prefixes when they are sending a new thread without it being a pain in the ass.

[Cyricx]

I'll be lookin for beta testers very soon as I'm going to rewrite the regex from the ground up.

So far 2.3 will have:

• Memory saving code fix for bbcode parser - DONE 8/28!
• vbmail for posts of threads and replies from forums - DONE 8/28!
• select which folder emails pull from per email address - DONE 8/28!
• Added error message for what forum is causing the error when manually running the cron job - DONE 8/28!
• Added userid to the display output for the autosubscription script - DONE 8/28!

I'm currently working on vbmail to be used for the cronjob and for a userinterface for forumsubscriptions. The interface skeleton code was provided by Ed. I've almost got it reformated to be able to handle mass appeal

edit - o yeah... duh. to be a beta tester PM me please and I'll reply with the url and logins for the test site.

[AyeCapn]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

No, it's something I haven't been able to incorporate yet.

The biggest brainfart is how I'm going to have people define prefixes when they are sending a new thread without it being a pain in the ass.

parse it from the subject line?

[cgmckeever]

RE: subject prefixes

Well - I may have come up with a workaround for the email replies --
it pulls a default prefix for the forum and applies it accordingly -- works in my test cases.

If you could give me a hint how to change the out bound email subjects both via a forum post and a email response, that would be HUGE


FIRST:
update the product-threadprefix_english.xml in two spots:

// product-threadprefix_english.xml
if (!verify_thread_prefix($this->info['forum'], $this->info['threadprefix']))
{
    // added to get default prefix - cgmckeever
    $this->thread['threadprefix'] = return_default_prefix($this->info['forum']);

    // removed for email integration - cgmckeever
	  //$this->error('nothreadprefix');
	  //$return_value = false;
}

SECOND:
add a lookup function in functions_threadprefix.php:

// includes/functions_threadprefix.php		
// returns the first prefix of a forum
function return_default_prefix($foruminfo){
  $prefixes = explode("\r\n", trim($foruminfo['threadprefix']));
  // print $prefixes[0];
  return $prefixes[0];
}

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by AyeCapn

parse it from the subject line?

I can totally do that for replies, and can start off the prefix with the new threads that start from the forums. But concern is how do you assign prefixes to new threads started from email?

The only way I can think of would be requiring the person to put like

(this is the prefix) Email title

in the subject line, but that way they would have to know all the prefixes to know which one to choose

Originally Posted by cgmckeever

RE: subject prefixes

Well - I may have come up with a workaround for the email replies --
it pulls a default prefix for the forum and applies it accordingly -- works in my test cases.

If you could give me a hint how to change the out bound email subjects both via a forum post and a email response, that would be HUGE

I'll have to work this into the next beta. If you tack on the prefix to the subject line, it will continue to grow and grow and grow and eventually if the thread gets 20 replies, your subject line will become nothiing more then the prefix repeating itself

The default prefix is a great idea though!! For forums that require a threadprefix, I can have it use the default one. I'll work this into the next version provided the regex's don't make my brain explode

[cgmckeever]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

I'll have to work this into the next beta. If you tack on the prefix to the subject line, it will continue to grow and grow and grow and eventually if the thread gets 20 replies, your subject line will become nothiing more then the prefix repeating itself

The default prefix is a great idea though!! For forums that require a threadprefix, I can have it use the default one. I'll work this into the next version provided the regex's don't make my brain explode

Thats a good point on the repeating PREFIX
how does the code handle the current prefix when a user hits reply?

[Cyricx]

Disregards it when it sends out the email right now. It doesn't prefix the title in the emails.

I did it that way til I could determine a good method to assign prefixes to newthreads from email.

I think I'll go with the default method.. maybe I'll work it into the forum manager so you can select which prefix to assign to new threads started from email. Hmmm much to think on

[cgmckeever]

I must be doing something wrong then, because mine definitely prefixes the titles

[Development-t-9] Why is there no user prefix

Any ideas?

[Cyricx]

Your forums do. But the emails do not, to keep them from repeating themselves indefinately.

As I mentioned, I did it this way til I could determine how I would assign prefixes for new threads from emails

Most likely the next version will support thread prefixes. It entirely depends on how severe rewriting the regexs will be.

If they take a long time then I'll release 2.3 without the thread prefix support and work on that for 2.4. As right now, the regexs take priority

But I will definately have support for thread prefixes soon! As I use those as well on my forums

[cgmckeever]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Your forums do. But the emails do not, to keep them from repeating

That is the subject line that is sent via email ---
maybe we aren't on the same page here. But the title definately gets a prefix slapped onto it
when it is sent to the email recpts.


UPDATE: maybe the EI script is using the parent (top level) title -- ?
in that case, you never have to worry about the growing subject. The sendder can change the title and it always rverts back to the originating parent thread ??