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

[Piggo]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

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

I'll wait to upload that until you get the "rename email subject" done!
<hint> <ahem> <cough>

[Cyricx]

Heheh.

It sounds like I still got a bug with posting from the forums too. Working with another poster on that one.

[amphicar770]

I've been running this mod for a while now with no problems until this week.

I have had two instances where a message gets posted over and over and over again, everytime the cron job runs. I went to the mailbox and deleted the message which stopped it. It seems that they were not deleted after they were sent so cron kept sending. Have only seen this with two posts but each time the message went out lots of times before I caught it.

[Cyricx]

The new beta version fixes that problem.

[neil00027]

Thanks Cyricx for your work on this modification - it is a great addition for vBulletin. I hope that it is built in as standard before long!

I've installed it on one of my sites and am getting the following error: Fatal error: Call to a member function set_parsing_language() on a non-object in /home/forum/www/www/includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 1093

Emails are normally (but not always) staying in the forum email inbox rather than being collected and added to the forum. I've read the thread above and think I've done everything suggested. What do you suggest that I do to solve this issue?

On another matter the Subject header is reading as follows: [Forum One-t-8]. I'm presuming the t-8 is the name of the thread. Is it possible to drop this item from the subject header?

As a point of clarification - how does this modification fit in with the moderation functions of vBulletin?

A couple of things for the wish list for the modification.

1. On the old style of email (which I much prefer!) - it doesn't say in the body of the email who the author. Would it be possible to add this? For many of my email users this will be an essential requirement.

2. I would like to add my own personal message to the footer - It would be great if this can be done simply by entering ones desired text into a text box designed for the purpose. There may also be times when I want to add a message also to the top of the message. Is there a way I can do both of these at the moment?

Once again thanks Cyricx for such an important addition to vBulletin!

[filipo]

Cyricx - Excellent and very useful mod!

I've been using phpBB2 with the m2f mod (mail to forum) but I'm considering the switch to vBulletin.

Couple of questions:

1. Is it possible to include attachments with outbound e-mails and not just the links?

2. When I send an attachment to the forum by e-mail, no thumbnail is generated - only the link is shown. Did I miss a setting somewhere that would have attachments show up the same as if they were added online in the forum?

[TRR]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

The new beta version fixes that problem.

I uploaded the beta... still have the issue ...

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by TRR

I uploaded the beta... still have the issue ...

Noted. Will continue working on it

Originally Posted by filipo

Cyricx - Excellent and very useful mod!

I've been using phpBB2 with the m2f mod (mail to forum) but I'm considering the switch to vBulletin.

Couple of questions:

1. Is it possible to include attachments with outbound e-mails and not just the links?

Possible. Yes, but not something I plan to code in, if someone wants to write that, rock on It's really not feasible for any of my uses. My intent is to get the readers to visit the forum and ween them off the mailing list

Originally Posted by filipo

2. When I send an attachment to the forum by e-mail, no thumbnail is generated - only the link is shown. Did I miss a setting somewhere that would have attachments show up the same as if they were added online in the forum?

Right now the attachments don't interact with the thumbnail generator. Something I plan to add very soon... well... after I get the last few bugs that keep cropping up ironed out!

Originally Posted by neil00027

I've installed it on one of my sites and am getting the following error: Fatal error: Call to a member function set_parsing_language() on a non-object in /home/forum/www/www/includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 1093

Can you please verify that you are using the latest version. Including readding the product xml and selecting overwrite as well as overwriting the /includes/cron/emailintegration.php file? I'm fairly certain this is a previously resolved bug.

Originally Posted by neil00027

Emails are normally (but not always) staying in the forum email inbox rather than being collected and added to the forum. I've read the thread above and think I've done everything suggested. What do you suggest that I do to solve this issue?

I believe I just discovered today, the criteria that is causing it. I believe it has to do with the message being a multipart:mixed and the decode file doesn't seem to be getting the body information and boundaries right. I'm digging through this now. The decode file was a open source file so I'm literally decodeing... the decode file to figure out where it is screwin up

Originally Posted by neil00027

On another matter the Subject header is reading as follows: [Forum One-t-8]. I'm presuming the t-8 is the name of the thread. Is it possible to drop this item from the subject header?

I tried to get rid of this in a previous version however, it has to be there. Alot of the newer email virus scanners are rebuilding the message header. Which is clearing ou the message id field that I use to determine parentids and such. So the t-# needs to be there otherwise the users with certain virus email scanners emails will always show up as new threads.

Originally Posted by neil00027

As a point of clarification - how does this modification fit in with the moderation functions of vBulletin?

I haven't tested this in depth yet.

Originally Posted by neil00027

A couple of things for the wish list for the modification.

1. On the old style of email (which I much prefer!) - it doesn't say in the body of the email who the author. Would it be possible to add this? For many of my email users this will be an essential requirement.

2. I would like to add my own personal message to the footer - It would be great if this can be done simply by entering ones desired text into a text box designed for the purpose. There may also be times when I want to add a message also to the top of the message. Is there a way I can do both of these at the moment?

Once again thanks Cyricx for such an important addition to vBulletin!

1. I had it adding in the signature of the user

I could add the username in there. I'll make a note and see about that in the next version.

2. Right now it's built in a very messy and slow manner. My thoughts are to take this to a global setting that people can go in and edit the links for etc. It's planned for the future, though it's a low priority compared to the few remaining rare bugs


Haven't dropped off the earth gang

I recently took over position of President for the not-for-profit org I do alot of work for, so I've been running around picking up pieces and writing custom modifications.

Bear with me...


O crap, forgot to mention.. anyone else having reports of AOL users unable to display the messages?

I'm fairly certain it has to do with the message encoding and have been working on that as well.

Thank you all for your support, bug reports and suggestions!

[neil00027]

Hey just thinking about about this modification - many of my members on some of my forums/email lists really like to get a digest of the forum/list messages. If such an option could be included in this moderation it would be great!

Thanks in advance!

[Cyricx]

You can already do that with default vbulletin

Though you can't reply to them straight from email, which wouldn't be possible by digest either as how would we know which one you were replying too