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]

Thanks!! I'll be adding this into the next version

Also note that I added an option to disable strict email checking for those like yourself that want to just check the "reply to" address.

[cgmckeever]

AWESOME
:up:

[vrwired]

i a little haze on this but i've run cron before --> what i'm missing here is what command (which script to call - emailintegration.php?) to run...

[Cyricx]

If you go to your admincp-> Scheduled Tasks -> Scheduled Task Manager ->

You should see Email Integration in that list of cron jobs. Click "Run Now" for the email integration and if there are any errors connecting to the mailbox, you will see them displayed there.

If there are not, your good to go and can setup the remaining forums with the same settings (but a different mailbox for each forum) and your good to go!

[Piggo]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

-----
With yahoo I can go to the options, type whatever email name I want, and that would show up as me. I wouldn't need any passwords.
------
I'm not saying the method I'm using is perfect security... but it at least requires that you are on sending from the same domain as the email your trying to fabricate.

I'm sorry but I will not remove this feature for anything less then a more secure method.

Removing the prime security feature to me, is just not wise even if it's not the perfect method.

In what version was this added?
Because I was (unfortunately) successfully able to spoof the from-email, and post a message as a different user in my currently installed version (I think 2.1).
This security issue is the main reason I have not gone full scale yet with this mod, as I feared anyone could post as anyone else, providing they knew the other person's email addy.

[cgmckeever]

Originally Posted by Piggo

In what version was this added?
Because I was (unfortunately) successfully able to spoof the from-email, and post a message as a different user in my currently installed version (I think 2.1).
This security issue is the main reason I have not gone full scale yet with this mod, as I feared anyone could post as anyone else, providing they knew the other person's email addy.

Piggo, I'll let Cyricx answer this more authoritatively -

I'm using this mod to mimic a mailing list, but also have the ability for users to search and post via the forum interface. The spoofing of users is intrinsic of mailing lists, and is something that I am comfortable with, seeing that I moved away form a mailing list - and came from that security level.

With that being said, the same issue exists for Yahoo groups, as someone can post as another user if they know the other users email address.

All in all, I think this plugin adds a great feature set, is well maintained, and is progressing well. Its honestly the major reason we moved from a pure mailing list environment.

-

[TRR]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

This must be something specifically with godaddy. One of the sites I used to help build was hosted on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) with westhost and it allowed IMAP to be enabled.

I really want this feature but I am on godaddy as well; any suggestions for a host that can support this mod (imap already enabled)?

[gonecountry]

OK I have installed and reinstalled followed all directions completely, I have also tried pop3 imap localhost etc all variations. The hack is just not working right if I create a thread in an email and send it, it posts to the forum but I'm not getting a email when a thread is replied to. Please advise, thanks.

[cgmckeever]

@gonecountry - just making sure that you have subscribed to instant notification for the forum (not the thread)

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by cgmckeever

Piggo, I'll let Cyricx answer this more authoritatively -

I'm using this mod to mimic a mailing list, but also have the ability for users to search and post via the forum interface. The spoofing of users is intrinsic of mailing lists, and is something that I am comfortable with, seeing that I moved away form a mailing list - and came from that security level.

With that being said, the same issue exists for Yahoo groups, as someone can post as another user if they know the other users email address.

All in all, I think this plugin adds a great feature set, is well maintained, and is progressing well. Its honestly the major reason we moved from a pure mailing list environment.

-

Thanks CGMC!

Also another note to the code, is your email address is COMPLETELY hidden with this modification. The email that people get has the address for the forum's email box. When you reply back, any instances of your email in the message or anything that is sent to the forum to add the thread is removed! Or the next build will also actually replace any appearances of your email address with a link to the form to email a user

One of my biggest complaints about yahoo is that my personal email address is seen by EVERYONE on the list. Which makes the security hole that also exists in yahoo insane in how easily someone could exploit it if they really really wanted to. At least with the vb code, they would have to have you email them directly first!

Originally Posted by TRR

I really want this feature but I am on godaddy as well; any suggestions for a host that can support this mod (imap already enabled)?

Be sure to ask if they are not wanting to install IMAP (not needed), or just not wanting to enable the imap functions (needed).

Alot of hosts will not want to install IMAP, which is fine. We just need php compiled with the imap functions enabled.