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

[Serenit_y]

Alright, I've now done the following
1. Installed EI 2.6.1,
2. copied the code from the patch to the file "forum_read.php" in my vbulletin cron folder
3. created the system cron file (with the 4line perl script) to initiate the forum_read.php file in my home folder;
/home/user/forum_read (no file extension)

4. added a command line to my cron tab to activate the cron, every two minutes with the line;
*/2 * * * * /home/jfasheyi/forum_read
5. Set the EI cron to run every minute, from the vbulletin EI integration panel.

Question
1. Whilst installing EI 2.6.1 BETA, it said
"go to AdminCP -> Email Integration -> Forum Setings Help" to find a script, which will test to
see which email connection your server uses
- I went to Email Integration settings, from the vbull options tab, but no "Forum settings help" option
existed. I use vbull. 3.8.4.
2. Looking at the system cron script, this line
"php /root/forum_read/forum_read.php" how will it know where to find my forum_read.php vbulletin cron
file, which is in the vbulletin/includes/cron folder.
3. When I add the forum_read.php cron to vbulletin, should it be added as a vbulletin product,
or Email Integration product.

Thanks a lot,

[toivo]

- I went to Email Integration settings, from the vbull options tab, but no "Forum settings help" option existed. I use vbull. 3.8.4.

It is not in the options tab but at the bottom of the left pane.

"php /root/forum_read/forum_read.php" how will it know where to find my forum_read.php vbulletin cron file, which is in the vbulletin/includes/cron folder.

You do not need to copy the file into the includes/cron folder, it can stay in your home directory, but you need to modify the path in the 4 line shell script to point to your home directory, or omit the path and the current directory will be used by default.

When I add the forum_read.php cron to vbulletin, should it be added as a vbulletin product, or Email Integration product.

The forum_read.php script cannot be added to vBulletin as a product or plugin because it has to work independently of vBulletin, triggered by the scheduler of the operating system on the same or another server. I run it from another server, and if you run it from the web server, you may have to modify the script.

[Serenit_y]

Originally Posted by toivo

It is not in the options tab but at the bottom of the left pane..

There is no EI option at the bottom of the left pane, admincp, here's a screenshot of my left pane.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v4...4at25603PM.png

[Serenit_y]

new problem, I re-installed everything.
Ran EI, but instead of saying "Done", it just didn't give a response.
- Out of 4 emails I posted onto the mail server, it only copied one to the forum
- It didn't delete any of the emails from the forum
- Whenever it ran, it kept copying that same email from the forum.

My assumption is, Perherps the code simply runs to
- Get email from mail server

And ignores the loop that tells it to get all the other emails on the mail server, then delete all the other emails.
Help?

[Serenit_y]

I've resolved the issue, for anyone who might have Qualms following the instructions on this board or can't find the right Information, here's precisely what I did.

To get EI to work

1. Un-Installed 3.8, and installed 3.7.1 Patch Level 2
2. Installed EI Mod, 2.6.1 beta
3. Added the patch on POST #843 here; https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...51222&page=57;


To make the Cron run every 3 minutes, and output to a logfiles
Followed the instructions here;
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=898

A bit more explanation Using Centos 05,

1. Created a file forumread.php in my home directory, to hold the php code (Code 1 on the above link)
2. Created a file forumread.cron in my home directory, to hold the command line script (Code 2 on the above link).
Added a line which, everytime the cron runs, writes into the file 'cronlog.txt', stating the date and time the cron last ran.
Here's an extract of my forumread.cron file;

#!/bin/bash
# load forum home page and read cron.php
/usr/local/php/bin/php /home/username/runcron.php
date +"EI Cron ran on%t %D At %T"%n >/home/username/cronlog.txt
exit 0

- went to my crontab home page, and created a new cronjob to access and run 'forumread.cron'
'cd /var/spool/cron'
'crontab -e'
'*/3 * * * * /home/username/forumread.cron

(My crontab is eddited using vi edittor, so to save the above change, typed ':wq')

Everything works well so far.
Thanks to Toivo and Cyrix.

Good luck.
Ciao

[Rhaegar]

Hi - just wondering if there's any news on getting this ported to vb4.

[Serenit_y]

Need some assistance in running the EI cron using the forumread.php patch,

I created a proxy site; forums.domainname.com, to connect to my vbulletin forum installed at, servername.domainname.com/vbulletin

On the forumread.php file, should the forum url variable be
The proxysite url, i.e.
$forum_url = 'http://forums.domainname.com/vbulletin/index.php';

Or should it be the server site
$forum_url = 'http://servername.domainname.com/vbulletin/index.php';

The same question with the cron URl variable,

Thank you v.much in advance.

John.

[FCS-Webmaster]

Hi there any solutions for vb4 Users? This Mod really rocks and I don't want to miss it :-/

[Krahl]

Same here. VERY interested in a vB 4 port of this mod.

[ecraig]

Will this Email Integration version work on VB3.8.X ?