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

[mtn-niche]

Rick, I'm trying to get your version of the mod working on vBulletin 4.1.10 and I'm seeing a few problems:

When viewing any page of the forum as a user, I get the following PHP warning at the top of the page:

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in [path]/includes/class_bootstrap.php(1366) : eval()'d code on line 1

Also, the Settings > General Settings page (my user profile area) is showing formatting errors such that stuff on the main section of the page is overlapping itself. I've attached a screen shot so you can see what I mean.

And a basic question about the mod installation: in Step 6 (Template EDIT) of the install.txt file, the second template edit says to find "<vb:if condition="$show['subscribetothread']">" and replace it with something else, but there are two instances of the string. Should I replace both instances or just the first?

Thanks for your work on this, and any help you can provide.

[RickMeyer]

Wow,
I have not seen any of these issues, a few others that I'm working on but not these.
What version of vB are you using?
I'll take a look at these when I get a chance, might be a few days though.

[mtn-niche]

Rick, I'm using V4.1.10. I found a bunch of other reports of problems when upgrading from 4.1.3 to 4.1.4 due to them moving the message editor from one path to another. I just copied the install package for version 4.1.3 to my server and I plan to try it with that version today. Can you tell me which vBulletin version you are working with? Also, do you know of any browser related issues with vBulletin (I'm currently using Firefox 4.01, so I'm a bit out of date there)?

Thanks

[mtn-niche]

Update: I've made some progress getting this to work using Rick's 2.6.2 Beta version of the mod with vBulletin V4.1.3 Patch Level 6. I was able to get a post to be created from an email reply (reply to an email from the Instant email Notification.)

I was getting the "array_merge" warnings until I deleted the line from product-emailreplyint.xml as SimCityForum mentioned in post #303, however it was a different line in my file (not line 238). Also, I found three cases of the "WHERE postid = $postid" code in the product-emailreplyint.xml but since the line numbers were different I was not sure if I should change any or all of them. In my version of the file, the code is found on lines 354, 438, and 765 (this is after deleting the one line earlier.) I assume this change is due to a table structure change but I have not tried to figure out the details yet. Anyone else tried this?

[mtn-niche]

Another update: Seems one needs to go back through every post in this thread as well as the thread for the mod for V3.6 to get this working!

I ran into the problem with the cron job failing and found the solution here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...151222&page=57
(see post #843 on that page)
This involves an edit to the emailintegration.php file . Without this fix the processing of the mailbox for the forum would sometimes fail and not delete messages that had been turned in to posts resulting in duplicate posts from one email (and get stuck in a loop). You can see the problem when you manually run the Email Integration task from the Scheduled Task Manager. After this fix when you run the task manually you get a nice report of what was done.

I'll keep testing and post anything else I find. I am surprised there is not more interest in this mod.

[Simon Lloyd]

Anyone have any issues with this and vb3.8.7 PL2? it's sending out the notifications instantly but not recognising the email replies, could it be to do with vBSEO?, if so anyone got a fix for it?

[Simon Lloyd]

Also this

require_once(DIR . '/includes/functions_threadprefix.php');

in emailintegration.php should read

require_once(DIR . '/includes/functions_prefix.php');

in vb3.8.x so i'm still puzzled that some folk have reported it working in vb3.8 ?

[saxman2008]

Originally Posted by filipo

Thanks very much, Rick! Anyone testing Rick's mod, please post your experiences here.

Yes, thanks Rick. I am trying to get this working for a new project and no email integration is a show stopper for me. I did have it working with 3.8.4.
I tried Rick's 2.6.2Beta with VB4.1.11 but had various problems there.
I am now trying Rick's 2.6.2Beta with VB4.1.3Patch6 and have it working with one warning.

I am getting;
Warning: mysql_escape_string() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in [path]/includes/class_core.php on line 727
The above warning is coming from subscription.php?do=dosubforums when I click "Add Subscription" in "Edit Forum Subscriptions". Despite this error it seems forum subscriptions are saved.

UPDATE: 7 March 2012
In VB4.1.5 I did get rid of the above error with a small change in EI_SubscribeForums plugin.
I today decided to try the same thing with VB4.1.11 and I see that EI is now working without any error and without having to edit the EI_SubscribeForums plugin.

[Cat Terrist]

Originally Posted by filipo

Thanks very much, Rick! Anyone testing Rick's mod, please post your experiences here.

Iget

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in [path]/includes/class_bootstrap.php(1353) : eval()'d code on line 76

But I have also gotten a lot further with EI working in the main - I see soemone else got the same error I did so I'll apply that fix and see how I go

[Cat Terrist]

I was getting the "array_merge" warnings until I deleted the line from product-emailreplyint.xml as SimCityForum mentioned in post #303, however it was a different line in my file (not line 238). Also, I found three cases of the "WHERE postid = $postid" code in the product-emailreplyint.xml but since the line numbers were different I was not sure if I should change any or all of them. In my version of the file, the code is found on lines 354, 438, and 765 (this is after deleting the one line earlier.) I assume this change is due to a table structure change but I have not tried to figure out the details yet. Anyone else tried this?

Also note I applied the remove line and change all three instances of "where postid". Errors I had have gone. I will presume that since what I had in vb 4.1.8 is the mirror so far of your results, I will likewise apply your fixes.

Thanks for your work Rick, much appreciated, after the fixes noted it looks like it's working well.