Major Additions - Email Integration (New Threads/Replies by and through email!)

This modification allows you to mimic email lists such as yahoo groups through your forums!

Complete with the user's receiving emails for new threads and replies AND being able to reply directly from email or sending a new email to start a new thread!

Just like email lists, you will need a separate email box for EACH forum that you have this enabled for!!

After installing this modification in the forum manager you will enter the settings for each forum to connect to it's own email box.

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 in one of two formats that you as the administrator decide. One format has a "reply box" and is the most sure fire way of not getting excess email crap ont he forums. The second format (noted as "Old" format) keeps an email in its base pure form with some attempts at quoting messages. Examples of both are 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!

IMAP
You MUST have php imap functions enabled on your server to use this modification! You do not need to have IMAP installed, just have to enable php to use the functions by recompiling it with imap enabled!

If you are upgrading from the version
for vbulletin 3.6.x , see below!

BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Unconfirmed 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!

• 2.5 Release
• • New Features
    • Email Integration now uses vbmail! This DOES require one small file edit.
• 2.5.1 Release -
  • New Feature -
    • Added some debug triggers in the cron file. Turning on debug will stop email sfrom being deleted after they are processed and if a message errors out, the error email will be sent to an admin specified email address which is set in the cron file.
  • Bug Fixes -
    • Fixed incorrect call to plain text parsing. (this is the cause of the duplicate posting/undefined function errors)
    • Corrected security hole.
    • Corrected a typo in the error message for attachments that are too large.
    • Rebuilt the method of determining attachment types vs max size to handle more then 2 attachments. Previous code would not process more then 2 attachments.
    • Added a call to determine the parentid for replies if one isn't specified prior to the post being added to the database from emails.
    • Fixed a bug where previous messages were blank in new layout for posts that didn't have a parentid specified.
• 2.5.2 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed bug with new users not being automatically subscribed to forums when it is enabled for their usergroup.
    • Added a dirty regex fix for utf-8 encoded filenames.
• 2.5.3 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed bug that displayed "Set All Instant" on User CP Subscribe Forums page when no forums were setup for Instant Email Notification.
    • Fixed bug that allowed forums that were set inactive to appear on the User CP SUbscribe Forums page.
    • Fixed bug with the how the "New Layout" processs improving how it tries to remove the first layer of > signs in replies.
  • Improvement/Bug Fix
    • Changed the field in the Forum Manager for forum['ei_usergroups'] so that it now controls not only who can reply via email. But who can receive instant notification emails. It is now titled "Please enter the usergroup IDs that can use this feature."
    • Added the phrase "You may increase the space between the above lines as needed." to the "New Layout" email templates to alleviate user confusion.
• 2.5.4 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Added a quickfix for a bug that caused a function error when replying to a thread that a user was subscribed to while in a forum that was enabled for Email Integration.
  • Error Checks Added
    • Added a function exists check to the cron file and the search settings page to warn people when they have not correctly enabled imap functions.
• 2.5.5 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Added a check to subscribeforum.php to not display subscription options for forums that are links.
    • Fixed a bug that caused the cron to incorrectly list the username and signature in the emails. (The post processed to the forums were correct, it was just the emails that were screwy sometimes.)
    • Slightly modified phrase and variables for replies so that if a post has a title, it'll use that title for the email, if not, it'll use the thread title like before.
• 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 3.7x

Upgrading from version for 3.6.x

• Due to using different product ID's due to the changes that will be coming up for the version for vbulletin 3.7.x you will need to uninstall the 3.6.x version and install the 3.7.x version in this thread. My apologies for the inconvienance, I've been unable to determine an alternative with the 3.6.x version still in development due to the last few bugs.

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

[snoopy5]

Originally Posted by Rich

Isn't the potential for this to backup the mail server pretty high? This could essentially generate a lot of emails if the site is active. If i am incorrect, I apologize. I am just thinking of the mass email that this could generate in addition to the email the site already sends.

very good question...

Can anybody answer this?

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by snoopy5

Hi

I am very interested in this hack. I only need a slight modification. I would be willing to pay for this.

I need this mailinglist functionality depending on the usergroup. I do not want that every user can use this feature, only premium members and Moderators shall be allowed to use this feature.

Would that be possible?

Thanks in advance

P.S.: Where is the difference between this hack above and this one:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=151222

This is very possible and I'll plan it in for the next version. Right now it allows you to restrict who can reply via email, but ti doesn't restrict who can subscribe to instant email notifications.

Let me check out some of these bugs and get them cleaned up and I'll code that in for the next version as well

Originally Posted by Rich

Isn't the potential for this to backup the mail server pretty high? This could essentially generate a lot of emails if the site is active. If i am incorrect, I apologize. I am just thinking of the mass email that this could generate in addition to the email the site already sends.

In the older versions this was a large issue. However, now the modification uses the vbmail function which allows you to define how many emails it can send at once. If it needs to send more then that number then it stores them in the database and periodically processes as vbulletin normally does

[Atsuko]

Ｈｅｌｌｏ！

Ｔｈａｎk you very much for making nice huck.
I installed this to 3.7 and seems working well.

My site is Japanese and using UTF-8 code.

When I make new thread, the mail for informing the content of new thread
can be sent without trouble.

When I reply by using the mail format, then
VB can receive the mail and show the conten, but can't read as Japanese.

Japanese mailer use ISO-2022-JP when sending mail.
I am sure so this is the reason that VB can't show Japanese when receive the mail.

Please advice where I should fix to solve this.

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by Atsuko

When I reply by using the mail format, then
VB can receive the mail and show the conten, but can't read as Japanese.

Japanese mailer use ISO-2022-JP when sending mail.
I am sure so this is the reason that VB can't show Japanese when receive the mail.

Please advice where I should fix to solve this.

I'll need to check into this and ensure that the mail decoder I use is setup to read that format.

I'll get back to you soon. Gonna be digging on this product hard today to fix a few of the reported bugs.

[Cyricx]

Atsuko, I sent you a PM with an email address. If you could please send me an email encoded as you mention to the email address in the private message, I'll work on the script to resolve your issue

Thank you!

[Rich]

In the older versions this was a large issue. However, now the modification uses the vbmail function which allows you to define how many emails it can send at once. If it needs to send more then that number then it stores them in the database and periodically processes as vbulletin normally does.

But if you process "x" amount of emails per hour, and the amount generated exceeds that number, you would still get a backup. It would all be qued to be delivered, but the mail que could be potentially backed up by days.

I am not just thinking of the mail generated by this script. i am trying to encompass all of the mail that the site already sends. With this added load, on active sites, couldn't this become an issue?

I think this is great for less active communities, but fear it would slow delivery to even normal email confirmations if the site is extremely active.

[Cyricx]

I think you underestimate the amount of time it takes vbulletin to process and deliver those emails

While I definately agree that putting it on a forum where you could have 1000 members autosubscribed to it would add a bit of a delay in the posts coming back, which is also why I strongly suggest not to use the autosubscription for large usergroups.

Also realize that the number of your users that will utilize this feature will not be all of them.

Alot of users HATE mailing lists. That's what this is...

However... alot of users HATE forums...

This let's you get those forum haters to participating in your forum and through the links in the bottom of the emails, gradually get them to roll around to the forum life

Please feel free to run this on a test server and try it out.

While the code is not yet at it's optimal form, it's definately strong enough to handle a significant load.

[Atsuko]

Dear Chris,

Thank you for PM.
I have just sent a mail just like I replied using your hack.

Sincerely,

Atsuko

[Cyricx]

Thanks!!

I'll start working on trying to process this. I found a few commands that will translate it to utf-8 so I just need to toy with it from there

[Rich]

Thanks for the response Cyricx. I don't completely understand the vbulletin mail system, so I am just trying to think of it logically. I know that when I was running 3.5 and had the auto prune usergroup modification installed, I experienced a mail backup.

It emailed users in the Unconfirmed Usergroup every 3, 5 and 7 days. Just that added load, in addition to the amount of users who subscribe to specific threads on my site, confirmation emails, comment emails, etc., I ended up having a day and half lag on sent emails.

Once I had uninstalled that modification, within a few days my mail que was back to normal.

I am looking at this as possibly doing the same thing. I may be wrong, but i wont know until I try it.

I like the concept of my staff being able to use this, so I may have to give it a go and see how it does.