Messages via Email like YahooGroups

[Peter Walker]

Originally Posted by Peter Walker

My question is, can vBulletin 3.5.0 be used to send all new posts in a similar way to a Yahoogroup which in turn sends out the post to my members.

I am now much further in implementing this idea. In fact, it is not even difficult.

vBulletin 3.5.2 has a function for automatically posting all new posts to a moderator. This function is ideal for posting all new posts to a specific Email address like a Yahoogroup for example. The Yahoogroup then handles the posting of all new messages to the members of that group. Digest messages are also possible.

First of all, I changed the text in the Phrase Type: Email Body Text, Varname "moderator" to:

Thread link: $vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?t=$threadinfo[threadid]

Posted by : $bbuserinfo[username]

$post[message]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DO NOT REPLY VIA EMAIL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Replies sent by email will go to the administrator, not the original poster!
To send a private message to the poster, click on the "Reply here" link (above) and then on $bbuserinfo[username] on the left.

and then the Phrase Type: Email Subject text, Varname "moderator" to

[Forumname] $foruminfo[title_clean] - $threadinfo[title]

Note: [Forumname] is not a function, it is the actual name of your Yahoogroup. For example, my vBulletin Board is http://www.rifeforum.com and my Yahoogroup handling the message notifications is called Rifeforum. I have therefore written the following in this phrase:

[Rifeforum] $foruminfo[title_clean] - $threadinfo[title]

This is the same format Yahoo Groups uses and is recognised as such.

Setup your Yahoogroup to be a notification only group where the only person allowed to post is the moderator with the Email address used by the board.

Once this is setup, all you have to do is define which forums will be sending all their posts to your Yahoogroup.

In the Forum Manager, select to edit the forum you wish to use to send notifications from.
Under Moderation Options, enter the Email address of your Yahoogroup in the field Email Addresses to Notify When there is a New Post and then save the changes. Repeat this for all the forums you want to setup notification for.

From now on, every new post in the respective forum is automatically sent to the Yahoogroup and from there onto all the members of that group.

Members can reply by clicking on the link at the top of the Email they receive.

The only problem left to be solved is that when the members click on the link, they are always sent to the first message in the topic, not the actual post.

A workaround is to use the following:

$vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?t=$threadinfo[threadid]&goto=newpost

The problem here is that only takes you to the correct post if it just happens to be the latest one.

The better answer would be to use the following in Email Body Text phrases, varname "moderator".

$vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?p=$postinfo[postid]#post$postinfo[postid]

but unfortunately that command does NOT work (it returns a blank).

I have not yet found out how to fix this, I would appreciate it if someone here could point out what needs to be done to be able to specifically use the post number instead of the topic number.