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

[kevinh]

Just in case users of this forum are unaware there is another very substantial thread about this mod here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...151222&page=61

We are now running this on a live vBulletin site and I thought it might be worth sharing some of the issues we have come across;

1. We had a small number of posts by email that displayed the html code in the email - we seem to have solved this by switching to plain text in the settings.
   
2. Users clicked 'reply' after receiving an email notification of a new post, then cleared the whole email composition window and typed their reply, resulting in a new thread being created by EI.
   
3. Users accidentally editing the dashed lines resulting in the whole reply email being puiblished in the forum, rather than what was just between the dashed lines - I'm surprised this wasn't treated as a new thread by EI.
   
4. One user couldn't figure out why he couldn't type his reply between the dashed lines before he clicked 'reply', (he thought it was because he was using a Mac!).
   
5. Users have also experienced some formatting/line break issues, possibly because their email text has been pasted from another application.
   
6. We have noticed that some users tend to reply to any email with a completely unrelated post which belongs in another forum. In this instance we move the post, however if another user respond to the original post by email, their reply ends up in the original forum, rather than the forum the post was moved to.

Although all but one of these are user related problems, they should be considered carefully before using EI on a large, busy vBulletin site, because it could easily create a heavy admin load for the site owner.

[salava]

Originally Posted by Joshva

Hi,

I have followed the instructions carefully but any emails i respond to just sit in the inbox of the email account. The mod does not pick them up. I have tried both POP and IMAP. I have tried running the cron manually. It still does not pick up.

How should I diagnose this issue?

Thanks,
Josh

I have absolutely the same problems. I have used several types of email accounts for the forum, I have used new "virgin" forum without any other mods, I have used several different options, but without success. The forum settings help script works without problems.
This mod will be very usefull for me, I have many old emails with information I want to place on board and it would be difficult manually.

I am using latest vB 3.7.2 and hostmonster hosting.

[salava]

Originally Posted by kevinh

That's how it's supposed to work, otherwise anyone could post to your forum if they know the EI mailbox address.

Who would be the sender of the post sent by email if there are two vBulletin users with the same email? [Such option is possible in vBulletin]. Or such emails will be ignored or the mod failed?

[kevinh]

Originally Posted by salava

Who would be the sender of the post sent by email if there are two vBulletin users with the same email? [Such option is possible in vBulletin]. Or such emails will be ignored or the mod failed?

I don't know why you would allow two different users to have the same email address. But if you did I don't know how this mod would handle it. Try it and see what happens

[kevinh]

Cyrix,

I have moved a thread from one forum to another and left a re-direct, both have EI enabled.

If someone replies by email to an email notification of a post to the original forum, sending it to the mailbox for the original forum, EI follows the re-driect and posts the thread in the new forum, but it sends out the email notification of the new post to subscribers to original forum (where the post no longer exists), and not to subscribers of the new forum.

Needless to say this is causing all sorts of problems!

Can you put this on the 'to do' list please

Thanks,
Kevin

[salava]

I am not able to try, mod does not work for me. And why same emails? I am preparing new forum for several groups of users and I want test all features plus to place on the board some "old" email discussions and not bother real users with new correspondence and me with opening so many new email accounts. But these are only details... The most important is to make the mod working.

[curse-1]

Hello, short question! Did someone translate coincidentally this nice tools on German?

[beishe8]

Is this mod dead?

[Cyricx]

Not dead. Just on haitus.

Economy and real life.

Going through a separation plus having to get extra income where I can leaves me with little time to devote to this right now.

But it's definately not going to die. As soon as I get the time I've got alot planned for this.

Funny how time can be so very elusive though..

[beishe8]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Going through a separation..

Sorry to hear that...