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

[toivo]

Hi ttseppal,

Thanks, that is interesting. The hot fix for 2.6.1 also involved unsetting a variable or rather an object.

I'll just continue testing and studying the source code to learn more.

Regards,
toivo

Originally Posted by ttseppal

Hi, toivo

In my case, the problem lies with the variable plaintext_parser not being correctly set. So I commented the line 1266 at cron/emailintegration.php like this:

//unset($plaintext_parser, $pagetext_cache);

This way, I do not receive the error on line 1093 (call to member function on a non-object), and emails get deleted from the mailbox, too. I just wonder what side effects this might cause.

[snoopy5]

Originally Posted by snoopy5

Hi

two questions:

1. is it possible to use this mod for sending the postings only one-way?

So that users only get the e-mail notification, but can not reply by e-mail

Thanks in advance

Hi

my old question is not answered yet. Is it possible to configure this hack, so that it works only one way?

So without reply by mail.

Only sending all messages which have been posted to the forum immediately to the user? without interruption and without clicking on a link to get the next posting also by mail?

[itconsultingnv]

Continuing to have the problem where it works for awhile, posts to the forum are sent out and email responses are posted, then suddenly, for no apparent reason it keeps sending an email post over and over and over, when I check the webmail I see the offending email post as well as other posts sent after that one that are sitting there waiting to be processed. If I go into the cron it gives me a line 1093 error, then if I go to the webmail, clear out all of the emails, then run the ei cron again it no longer errors. Don't know if that is related in some way. Anyone know what to do? Is Cyrcicx still supporting this software? Not sure if I should continue spending time on this option until further notice. Please help. Anyone else running this successfully? Thanks!

[Ted Clore]

After several frustrating attempts to get this to work with vB 3.6.8, 3.6.9 and 3.7.0, I have given up. I have spent 4-5 hours trying. It is a good idea and if it worked with my site it would be a nice addition. I'll keep checking for further updates that may make this an easy hack to install.

[snoopy5]

is this mod dead?

Did anybody achieve to get it running? Even if it is only for sending postings out without the reply functionality?

[toivo]

I can confirm the EI mod reads the messages from the mailbox, posts them and sends them with the reply capability which also works in our test forum. I had to force the language code to 1 (see https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...151222&page=55) to make it delete the messages from the mailbox, otherwise the posts were repeated.

I have also tested a small script which reads the forum home page at regular intervals, to boost the traffic and trigger the EI script which depends on the hits which cause the cron tasks to run.

Regards,
toivo

[MikeH2911]

Hi,

I installed v2.2 of this mod and have since removed it, however there is still a link in forum tools to subscribe to a forum, I'm sure this was from a file edit somewhere but can't find it, can anyone help me out. How do I remove this?

Mike

[Crys]

Hi,

I'm looking for some assistance regarding the e-mail integration hack. Everything is installed but, for some odd reason, none of the e-mails/replies are being posted on the forum. However, if I posted directly on the forum, I get the e-mail. I set everything up using GMail and followed exactly what was instructed. Am I missing something???????

Please let me know soon because I really need this working for an event happening Friday. Thank you so much for your help!

~ Crys ^^

[capsize]

There's a bug when Allow Attachments? is set to "No" and Dismiss Attachments? is set to "Yes" in the EI options. In this mode, the attachments are supposed to be discarded and the post is supposed to be made using only the text portion of the email.

In the code for this mode, there's an error that causes the emailed post/reply with the attachment(s) to be left undeleted in the incoming mailbox and causes processing to skip the message entirely with no post made to the forum.

The fix is this:

Comment out the statement in line 515 (assuming v2.6.1beta) of emailintegration.php to allow the post to proceed without the attachments:

PHP Code:

else if ($d_message['attachments'] AND $vbulletin->options['ei_allow_attachments'] == 0 AND $vbulletin->options['ei_dismiss_attachments'] == 1)
{
  $eilog .= "Attachments dismissed: " . $userinfo['username'] . "\r\n";
  $mailmessage .= "\r\n\r\n[Attachments are disabled from email. Non-text portions have been removed.]";
  //continue;      /**** comment out to fix the bug ****/
} 


Thanks a million for adding this mode, Cyricx!

[mykkal]

This is good information.

Will they submit a new release that has bug fixes?

Originally Posted by capsize

There's a bug when Allow Attachments? is set to "No" and Dismiss Attachments? is set to "Yes" in the EI options. In this mode, the attachments are supposed to be discarded and the post is supposed to be made using only the text portion of the email.

In the code for this mode, there's an error that causes the emailed post/reply with the attachment(s) to be left undeleted in the incoming mailbox and causes processing to skip the message entirely with no post made to the forum.

The fix is this:

Comment out the statement in line 515 (assuming v2.6.1beta) of emailintegration.php to allow the post to proceed without the attachments:

PHP Code:

else if ($d_message['attachments'] AND $vbulletin->options['ei_allow_attachments'] == 0 AND $vbulletin->options['ei_dismiss_attachments'] == 1)
{
  $eilog .= "Attachments dismissed: " . $userinfo['username'] . "\r\n";
  $mailmessage .= "\r\n\r\n[Attachments are disabled from email. Non-text portions have been removed.]";
  //continue;      /**** comment out to fix the bug ****/
} 


Thanks a million for adding this mode, Cyricx!