Vbulletin and Mail 2 Forum Program

[dcpaq2xx]

Group,

Is there anyone who has used or had any experience with the Mail2Forum program that is used for PHPBB?

www.mail2forum.com

For those who are not familiar or who have never heard of it before it is a program that lets a mailing list and a message board communicate with each other.

If anyone has ever been a member of yahoo groups and has enabled the "Individual Emails" feature in their profile and has posted a message via their email client, or received a message that was posted to the board through the web based via email, this is how M2F works.

Im wondering if theres anyone here that might know how to get a mailing list and Vbulletin to communicate with each other.

I am trying to reproduce the exact same thing that yahoo groups is doing currently today, but with Vbulletin or PHPBB.

I just bought a license for Vbulletin and plan on staying with VB so im looking to come up with something for VB.

I am using Hsphere's webhosting control panel and it has a built in mailing list feature, so thats my mailing list for anyone whos familiar with Hsphere.

Can anyone help me with this project?

Doug

[dpark]

Heya,

I'm also new to vBulletin, I picked up a license very recently and have been committed to this path, but unfortunately, I think mail2forum+phpBB is exactly what I wanted. Oh well, time to see if I can replicate its functionality on vBulletin instead.

I've been trying to accomplish exactly the same thing as you but with one difference: I don't want to use an external mailing list manager like you do, I want vBulletin (plus hacks/add ons) to be the mailing list manager. mail2forum looks like it can operate that way (with phpBB). Basically, because I want to tie mailing list membership to vB usergroup membership (and when people change their email addresses in the user CP, I want that to be reflected when people send emails to the list / post to the forum).

What I've been trying to start with is the vanilla vB 3.0.7 plus the NNTP gateway mod (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65152). Unfortunately, this assumes an external mailing list manager (it retrieves emails via a POP connection and sends them out to a single address--the list address). I've managed to hack it a bit so that it handles emails over stdin when called on the command line (like a normal mailing list manager). That way it doesn't have to poll a silly POP account, it can just be called each time an email is received. The harder part is to get it to send new forum posts to every person in a specified vB usergroup that we somehow tie to a forum. At some point, I'll also have to hack the vB usergroup system so that 1) usergroup leaders can add / remove users w/o asking, 2) perhaps add some sort of invite system.

But part of the thing that's slow for me is that it's just taking a while to learn vBulletin--both its internal code structure, for which there is little documentation, as well as its out-of-the-box capabilities (for example, apparently users can subscribe to forums.. but instant emails are not an option for subscription, only daily/weekly digests.. and users can't be subscribed to forums by forum leaders... and forum leaders don't exist, this is why I'm trying to go the usergroup-tied-to-forum route. I still also can't figure out why vB makes a distinction between "primary" and "secondary" usergroups, but it seems ignorable for now). At the moment, I haven't made much progress at all.

Anyway, if you want to use an external mailing list manager, just use NNTP gateway, it probably does most of what you want. I'll just keep hammering at this myself..

[Dark_Wizard]

Easy script....

[dpark]

Easy script? Any pointers?

I'm trying to figure out why nntp_gateway touches the post/thread tables by hand instead of using functions like build_new_post. Trying to figure out build_new_post. Basically, trying to figure out the best insertion point of my own code to send new forum posts to everyone in a certain usergroup... currently thinking of hacking exec_send_notification to do the task (and removing some of the conditional logic in the if statement in build_new_post that calls exec_send_notification). Not sure if this is the right path.

[Dark_Wizard]

That script Mail2Forum is overwritten in the fact that from a quick view there is alot of redundant code. vBulletin has most of the functionality built in with a few missing pieces that can easily be constructed. Contact me via IM and we can discuss this as I was going to write one for vbulletin.

[Viks]

I Would be interested something like mail2forum for vB!! there is something in the vB beta section for that but no update for a long time ..
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=68113

[dcpaq2xx]

Something more exactly like yahoo groups than like mail2forum would be much better i think. And attachments and html and the option for the each member to select if they want attachments and/or html is a must.

Just my opinion anyway.

Doug

[amphicar770]

I have been asking similar questions for a some time now but the answer remains elusive. For a while, I was even considering going with mailgust in order to have this capability.

I understand that the mail2forum part presents some technical challenges. For now, I would be satisfied just having a forum2mail component similar to what is found in Wowbb. In this model, users subscribe (by forum) to receive individual messages or daily digests via email. The emails contain the full text of the message as well as the link to the message should they want to reply.

If users at least can receive posts by email, they can then be compelled to reply via the link.

And yes, I also would be willing to contribute some $$$ to see this happen.

[3z3k3l]

This would be a great addon for VB! Anyone pursue it?

[COBRAws]

Any updates on this? Im really interested.