Discussion: Forum participation by email

[JamesUS]

I've decided to try and construct this hack but would like some input first if possible

From other threads and my own ideas, here is how I think it should work:

User subscribes to the forum(s) that he/she would like to participate in via email. They then receive emails on every new thread and post in that forum.
To reply, they simply hit reply in the email client. The userid and encrypted password would be stored in the subject line of the email (hence would still be there after reply). These would then be matched to the user's email address when the mail reaches vB.

To start a new thread I am not sure of yet, we either have:
-there is a link in all mails "start a new thread in this forum"
-an initial email when joining contains links to start threads in all of the forums
-send mail to "generalchat@vbulletin.com" for example.

On the vB side, mail would go to a POP mailbox on the server. This would be checked every x minutes through a cron job - if anyone has any better ideas as to how to do that please let me know - I'd rather avoid cron if possible but can't see any other way.