WMail - a POP3/SMTP Webmailer for vBulletin

What is this?
---------------
WMail is a "webmail client" - a front end, like a mail tool installed locally on your PC, for using POP3/SMTP mailboxes.

In short:
WMail adds POP3/SMTP access to vBulletin.

A live demo can currentliy be found on my testing board here:
http://vbdev.area-42.net/wmail.php


Key features:

• The obvious: Getting mailbox content, reading mails from every POP3 mailbox and sending mails through any SMTP server (configurable in the user options)
• written from scratch, spezificially to be used with vBulletin 3.5.x - not a port of something
• fully phrased and templated down to the last bit
• Full multipart support for downloading (and sending) attachments
• When reading mail the mail text is parsed for BB-Codes, so you get the graphical smillies from the forum, text formatting and URLs automatically become clickable links
• When replying to, or forwarding, mail the text of the original mail is quoted, propper quotemarks are added and a quote-header is added (customizable via template)
• various options for admin and users to customize the webmail client
• Does NOT require any special modules to be compiled into your PHP installation (like the IMAP libraries)
  (for techies: this uses basic socket connections instead of special PHP function calls)
• Admin can override certain aspects of the user config (forcing to use a given mailserver, force using forum email address and such)
• Write your mails using vB's WYSIWYG editor
• buildin (yet simple) addressbook for your E-Mail contacts
• Read/Unread markings - unread mails are highlighted, options for "mark selected read", "mark all read" and "mark selected unread"
• custom hooks to make it easy to develop addons for it
• automatically adds links to the webmailer in "Quick Links" menu, navbar and UserCP. Usualy no template edits needed when using default ones (can be disabled for each link in admin options)

Planned features:

• Support for multiple config sets per user
  (and so multiple mailbox accounts that can be querried)
• Sort mails into folders
• User configurable filters (for automatically sorting mails into folders)
• Preview of mailtext in inbox view (bellow subject)
• Forward mails as PM / Forward PMs as mail
• Reply to threads and PMs by mail
• Give/Provide your members an own eMail adress and inbox on your forums!
  • Members can recieve and send mails as "username@forumdomain.tld" without the need for an own POP3 account anywhere
  • Admin only needs ONE "real" POP3 box as "catch all".

Installation
--------------

Level : EASY
Duration : a minute or so
Files to upload : yes (11)
Products to import : yes (1)
Templates to edit : usually none


ChangeLog
===========
1.00 - first final release

• Fixed some minor bugs
• Login details are no longer stored as plain text in the database (*see note bellow!)
• Added option to save login details in a cookie on the users local computer instead of storing them in the forum's database

* Note on storing the login details in the database:
The login details are only base64 encoded when stored in the database.
A more secure encryption would make no sense anyway, the login details must be decrypted to be passed to the POP3/SMTP server - one well placed line of additional code in the POP3 or SMTP class could save the decrypted info anywhere the admin likes.
This "encoding" is only meant to prevent login details to be read (in plaintext) when doing maintanance to the database and stepping over it.
For fully securing the login details the "Save in cookie" option has been added.

Known Issues:

• On some installations mass deletion of mails (via "Delete Selected" from the inbox view) does not delete all mails
• Sometimes you get "-4 mails in inbox" - reloading the page then shows the correct inbox again

Besides of those two issues, that do not really break the function of the webmailer, it seemed to run pretty stable so far - that's why I decided to release 1.00 without having them resolved.


(more changelog entries in the readme)

____________________
This vBulletin extension is FREE! Be welcome to download and use it.
However, if you feel like supporting further development any donation is appreciated :bunny:

[Hellcat]

Check if the host where you run the forum blocks socket connections from PHP scripts.
Some do that....

Originally Posted by rmxs

TOday without do to something (i restart only the sql server)
im get this
Uncached templates: webmail_mailbox (1)
Uncached templates: webmail_mailboxitem (3)

When did this happen?

[Hellcat]

Originally Posted by MThornback

Apologies if someone reported this already....

In template webmail_settings
SMTP one is missing $ in front of it

Edit: I made a few cosmetic changes to the template besides...repositioned the buttons and added the paperclip image for attachments instead of the one you used....lemmie know if your interested in the alternative

Whooooops.... that $ slipped...
[high]* Hellcat fixes
[/high]

And yeah, I am definately interested in cosmetic enhacement

[MThornback]

The webmail_homepage template may or may not look funny...I was starting to toy with changing the layout a bit for it...and the changes I made are quick and dirty....the img url is right in the template rather than making a variable for it or anything like that...I widened the error that appears when there are no messages to view to make it equal with the controls at the bottom and centered the title and the error message itself

Another couple of suggestions I came across for you...for the address book:

making it possible to group contacts into a mailing list....

Administrators being able to have a list of contacts AND a list of user account addresses to save a trip to the ACP

Other suggestion:

Ability to save a draft....something reasonable like 5 per user? or customizable per group?

[Hellcat]

@MThornback:
Cool, will look at the template changes

For the other things:
Mailinglist: yep, had thought of that as well - must see how to implement that best
Admin: You're talking about the eMails of all register users?
Save as draft: I want to implement support for folders - saving as a draft could be easily put in there then....

[MThornback]

Mailing List....what I was thinking was being able to create a group...and have arrow buttons to move contacts into them and a copy contact button so it would like this in the contact list:

--Group Name
----Group Member
Contact

--Forum Staff
----Admin1
----SuperMod1
Jow Blow

Admin:
Yea, calling the username, real name & e-mail column from the user table

Save as draft: Cool


Another idea for you....

A Forum Junk mail list....let Admin's configure a list of junk accounts and domains...and maybe even have a "report" link that will give the link to Admin's to add to the list


I wish there was a user title for idea guy

[Tralala]

Originally Posted by Hellcat

I updated the list of planned features:

• Support for multiple config sets per user
  (and so multiple mailbox accounts that can be querried)
• Sort mails into folders
• User configurable filters (for automatically sorting mails into folders)
• Preview of mailtext in inbox view (bellow subject)
• Forward mails as PM / Forward PMs as mail
• Reply to threads and PMs by mail
• Give/Provide your members an own eMail adress and inbox on your forums!
  • Members can recieve and send mails as "username@forumdomain.tld" without the need for an own POP3 account anywhere
  • Admin only needs ONE "real" POP3 box as "catch all".

Holy moly these features sound absolutely incredible. Go, Hellcat, go!

[MThornback]

Originally Posted by Tapiocapioca

I can't send mail!!

Error is: There has been an error while talking to your SMTP server!
Sessionlog follows:

Connection to smtp.spazioumts.org:25....failed: Connection refused

Under outlook express same account work!

I make a test account... Please test for me!!

User: wmailtest@spazioumts.org
Password: wmailtest
server: smtp.spazioumts.org

smtp required autentication

Sorry for my english!!!

Did you try both SMTP authentications? Plain and Login?

try re-importing the product (overwrite: yes)...I find sometimes that if I overwrite....little glitches disappear on their own ....may or may not work

[Nj?rd Eriksson]

When you update the software, please consider to encrypt the email passwords that are stored in the database

This is a serious security concern.

[Hellcat]

Originally Posted by Nj?rd Eriksson

When you update the software, please consider to encrypt the email passwords that are stored in the database

This is a serious security concern.

Yes, that's something I want to implement ASAP.
However, since the passwords have to be accessible, there must be a decrypt function in the script - a hash would not work.
An admin who intentionally wants to get hold of the passwords could simply use the decrypt funtion to get them.

But during some chats on IM about this issue I got the following, I will definately build into one of the next updates (hopefully 1.0final):
Besides crypting login details in the database a user option to save the login details in a cookie on the local machine instead of saving them in the forum's database.

This (almost) eliminates the need to re-enter the login details everytime a user wants to use this, but also doesn't send it to anywhere else.
Only when the user uses another computer or the cookie gets deleted (on logout for instance) he has to re-enter the login details.

If the user trusts his admin(s) he can still let the login details be saved (in some way crypted to avoid "fly by" catching) in the forum's database to never have to enter them again.

[dreck]

Originally Posted by Hellcat

I updated the list of planned features:

• Support for multiple config sets per user
  (and so multiple mailbox accounts that can be querried)
• Sort mails into folders
• User configurable filters (for automatically sorting mails into folders)
• Preview of mailtext in inbox view (bellow subject)
• Forward mails as PM / Forward PMs as mail
• Reply to threads and PMs by mail
• Give/Provide your members an own eMail adress and inbox on your forums!
  • Members can recieve and send mails as "username@forumdomain.tld" without the need for an own POP3 account anywhere
  • Admin only needs ONE "real" POP3 box as "catch all".

Great!
The wmail094rc4 updated fine & works great, Thanks!

Originally Posted by Nj?rd Eriksson

When you update the software, please consider to encrypt the email passwords that are stored in the database

This is a serious security concern.

hmm