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

[Magnum164]

ok. Not sure what I actually did, but I got it to working.

[geniusjones]

Wow Cyricx, let me just say thanks for the awesome mod. This might or might not be the lynchpin of me convincing our group to switch from our old mailing lists to a real 2008 piece of software for our intranet.

I have this working a little, but I have two very very large issues that are preventing me from testing this any more.

First, is there any way I can have the software care about the 'TO' field instead of the 'FROM' field? OR what about specifying the filter criteria for matching myself? For various reasons, I am working from a pre-existing email list that cannot be reconfigured, so I'm stuck with my list email being in the 'to' field. It only takes emails if it finds a user with an email address corresponding to the email in the 'From' of the list email.

Secondly, my list is live, so the rejection emails when I have things wrong are driving my users crazy. Is there any way for me to have it send error emails somewhere BESIDES back to the sender in the email? This is a show-stopper for me -- it's erroring out, but I can't test it because I only have problems with your mod and my actual list list, not with my control emails, and testing the list spams it and there are 100 people reading this in my business.

What do you think? Any thoughts are welcome!
GJ

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by geniusjones

First, is there any way I can have the software care about the 'TO' field instead of the 'FROM' field? OR what about specifying the filter criteria for matching myself? For various reasons, I am working from a pre-existing email list that cannot be reconfigured, so I'm stuck with my list email being in the 'to' field. It only takes emails if it finds a user with an email address corresponding to the email in the 'From' of the list email.

I'm really not understanding what your meaning here... let's talk via PM and try to determine what your needing

You can define the email to come from the same person, same email address for all emails (just the reply_to changes for each forum), you can set that up in the settings.

Originally Posted by geniusjones

Secondly, my list is live, so the rejection emails when I have things wrong are driving my users crazy. Is there any way for me to have it send error emails somewhere BESIDES back to the sender in the email? This is a show-stopper for me -- it's erroring out, but I can't test it because I only have problems with your mod and my actual list list, not with my control emails, and testing the list spams it and there are 100 people reading this in my business.

What do you think? Any thoughts are welcome!
GJ

It's really a bad idea to test anything in a global environment. Create a new forum, with a new email box and only let your admins and moderators interact with it. Then you can test it without having your user's experience any problems.

[Cyricx]

I've uploaded a 2.6.1 beta version which in my testing has resolved the multiple posted replies error.

It does not have any new features in it.. this is just a hotfix

That hopefully fixes it...

[tekguru]

Got it Chris, interestingly enough I did not get an update notification through.

[Cyricx]

Yeah.. I didn't send one. Didn't want to keep bombing everyone, especially until I had good confirmation that it was a fix.

Fixing it on my test site doesn't always = fixing it live. That's where I look for bug reports

[geniusjones]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

I'm really not understanding what your meaning here... let's talk via PM and try to determine what your needing

1) You can define the email to come from the same person, same email address for all emails (just the reply_to changes for each forum), you can set that up in the settings.


2) It's really a bad idea to test anything in a global environment. Create a new forum, with a new email box and only let your admins and moderators interact with it. Then you can test it without having your user's experience any problems.

1-Hmmmmmmmmmm this gave me an idea. Ok I'll put that in my test. I have to redeploy the whole install before I try again so it'll take me another day or two because of regular time constraints.

2-I agree fully. I did have it set up the way you describe and it was working to my satisfaction. It was when I went to do a small test on the live list address when I ran into some of my limits. It just so happens that one rejected email caused 100 people to phone me haha.

I PMed you my IM info, and I'll speak to you as we have time. Thanks Cyricx for your brain time.

Best regards,
GJ

[pnd]

Hi Cyricx. Thanks for this great mod. I currently encounter some grumpy old ladies who also refuse to use the message board and only want to keep their conversation via email

I have 2 questions and hopefully you can help me out.

1) i believe i got everything installed properly. when someone creates a post or thread, a forum subscribed user receives an email in his inbox, and when he replies, it sends a notification other subscribers but doesn't direct to the forum for some strange reason. is there a setting in my server that may prevent this from happening?

2) when a subscribed user creates a thread/post in the forum, it sends a notification email to himself. is there anyway to prevent this? instead only send an email when someone else posts in that subscribed forum other than himself?

Thanks in advance!

[tekguru]

Loaded it finally this afternoon Chris. Forum has been quiet today but no dupes at all yet!

[Ron Wilhelm]

Thanks for a great plugin. This really elevates vBulletin's usability. I had one problem though - new threads didn't show the posters name in the initial email on "CURRENT MESSAGE FROM:" line for new style emails. I played around with this and fixed it by changing

$poster = $bbuserinfo['username'];

to

$poster = $vbulletin->userinfo[username];

in the newthread_post_complete plugin.

EDIT: I know my profile shows 3.6.7, but this was also on my 3.6.8 PL2 dev board.