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

[amphicar770]

The new version i sup and running.

I did have a problem with the new, "type between the lines format". Myself and some other users did type between the lines but when the message posted the text was not there. I decided I prefer the old format so am using that.

Here is an enhancement request. Might be asking for the moon. A lot of users have asked about having a daily digest email complete with message content (unlike the headers only that VB provides). Any chance we might see something like this in a futre release?

Again, this is the greatest VB Mod of all time!!

[subnet_rx]

Originally Posted by tekguru

Wehave a problem with the email integration Mod. On enabled forums around 60% of the time if we quick reply we get:



taking place, if we refresh the post is there. If we use regular reply around the same amount of chances we get (..815), again a refresh fixes.



We?ve also seen: ?This post is a duplicate of a post that you have posted in the last five minutes. You will be redirected to that thread.?

Or

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/windows/public_html/forums/includes/functions_newpost.php on line 908


So some serious issues for us somewhere...

Can give you Admin access if you need it to track this one down.

Have confirmed if we disable the Mod the issue vanishes completely, turn it back on and it returns.

I'm having the same problem. Specifically, the function on mine is set_parsing_language.

[Cyricx]

I'm all over these few bugs guys. I'm pretty sure I've got both narrowed down to exactly what is going on.

I should have a fix released tomorrow early.

The duplicate post problem is due to an error occuring that seems to be tied to the user's that have autosubscribe enabled. I'm pretty sure this is focused on the starting queries I run for building the new layout emails.

The call to function I believe is also tied to the plain text parser.

JohnNM, it should still be INBOX. Please check your PMs on a good time to call you tomorrow to resolve this issue and take care of those custom tweaks you were wanting

Had a rough weekend helping some friends out with a loss so it pushed my plate back a few days.

Thank you all for your patience on this

[bchertov]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

I had considered this [handling attachments but haven't thought about working it in yet as if someone sent outan attachment and you had 200 people setup for the emails. I would tend to think that sending out 200 emails with attachments could be a real stress on the servers.

That was the reason for going with the links to the attachments.

I'll have to put some more thought into this one.

I have hacked my individual emails and daily digest to include a link to any attachments, just like on the website. Works great! Note that I am NOT using your email integration system yet. I'm waiting for it to mature a bit more...

[Cyricx]

Latest version released, all of the above bugs are all resolved.

Please let me know if you have any other issues at ALL. I want to fix every bug I can find... unfortunately my testers are few

Thank you all for your support!!

[tekguru]

But we care Chris Just about to install now...

[RWerksman]

Chris,

The email notifications notify you of the post you just made. Is there a way to make that stop or an enhancement that can be made to eliminate that?

Also, what does the portion of the notification message subject between the [ and ] function as? Can we move that to the end of the subject or eliminate (or alter it) so the subject can be smaller?

I'm also getting a "Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/windows/public_html/forums/includes/functions_newpost.php on line 908" as well, but I haven't updated to 2.5.1 yet.

Rob

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by RWerksman

Chris,

The email notifications notify you of the post you just made. Is there a way to make that stop or an enhancement that can be made to eliminate that?

You want user's to not be notified of their own posts?

Originally Posted by RWerksman

Also, what does the portion of the notification message subject between the [ and ] function as? Can we move that to the end of the subject or eliminate (or alter it) so the subject can be smaller?

Unfortunately, this is a nessecity. Some virus scanners change alot of the header information in the emails. So we need a backup method to ensure that we are correctly putting replies in the right spot. If you remove that, this is a HUGE chance that alot of replies will be classified as new threads.

Originally Posted by RWerksman

I'm also getting a "Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/windows/public_html/forums/includes/functions_newpost.php on line 908" as well, but I haven't updated to 2.5.1 yet.

Update to 2.5.1 and you'll be good to go!

[RWerksman]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

You want user's to not be notified of their own posts?

Right. The standard notification system in VB is to not notify you of your own posts.

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Unfortunately, this is a nessecity. Some virus scanners change alot of the header information in the emails. So we need a backup method to ensure that we are correctly putting replies in the right spot. If you remove that, this is a HUGE chance that alot of replies will be classified as new threads.

Can I move it to the end, or can I make it so the message is different? such as:

Reply to thread 'Miscellaneous Hacks - Unread Posts .... [t-1432429]

?

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by RWerksman

Right. The standard notification system in VB is to not notify you of your own posts.

True, standard email lists though sends out all of them.

I'll add this as an end user option in the next build or two. It'll just need a few if statements

Originally Posted by RWerksman

Can I move it to the end, or can I make it so the message is different? such as:

Reply to thread 'Miscellaneous Hacks - Unread Posts .... [t-1432429]

?

Not without modifying the cron file.

Let me explain a little bit about the reasoning of the way the subject line is built.

Most places are going to load multiple forums up with this. So the forum name is in the subject line so you know what forum it is going to. This can be very important if you have a public forum and a moderators forum enabled for example.

The t-threadid# is mandatory as the backup for if someone has a good virus scanner going to town on the email headers

The last part is the subject of the message

The regex in the cron file first checks the "in_reply_to" of the emails. If a virus scanner has replaced that with something else it then scans the subject line and looks for

[$forumname-t-(.*)](.*)

The first set of paranthesis is the threadid number. The second set is the subject of the post

If you switch those around backwords you'll get posts with no subject.

I have to becareful not to add in TOO many options though or people will get abundantly confused hehehe