Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email)

This mod is based off of the Mail Reply modification by Colin F to which I have obtained permission to rewrite and release.

This modification allows you to mimic email lists such as yahoo groups through your forums!

After installing this modification you will have new settings in your forum manager where for each forum you can enable this modification and setup a separate email address to use for each forum that you have this enabled for.

Just like how there is a separate email address for each yahoo group.

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. (Example email 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!


BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Confirmed 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!
(See the file in the zip for a complete history!)

• 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 3.7!

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

[mee88]

Great idea >>>> you are great }}}}} waiting for ur final release

[rustybones]

I am definitely going to be watching this with great interest, I can't wait for the stable version!

[RvG2]

hmmm i will be watching this it goes final! good work!

[Talisman]

Thank you so much for developing this feature. My past online communities formed originally from mail lists -- ONElist which became eGroups which preceded Yahoo Groups. Once we outgrew the free sites, I bought my vBulletin license and it's been online forums ever since.

I really miss being able to hang out on my own machine without being tied to a browser page -- while getting immediate messages (or daily/weekly digests) and sending out immediate replies right there in my inbox (without having to go to the site all the time). BUT I still want to have an online forum/community to visit too. It'll be great to offer both forms of interaction for my membership so it would better cater to each individual's preferred method.

Thanks again.. this is an excellent idea.

[fxs158]

great idea looking forward to it

[Tralala]

This is one of the first mods in a while to actually make me DROOL.

I seriously cannot WAIT to see this in action!

I have a forum that has migrated recently from a Yahoo! mailing group ... and participation is down. These folks, for whatever reason, were more comfortable with the "push" email interaction, and haven't taken the initiative to actually visit the forum on their own. It's an uphill battle, and now they're all asking why we made this switch in the first place. This mod would give us the best of all worlds, it seems!

I will certainly donate when it's made available.

[rustybones]

Yeah we're going through the exact same transition, trying to move users from a mailing list to a forum and have some users in rather remote areas.

For example one user lives in Yap, Micronesia and only has 10 hours internet access a month, so this product would be IDEAL for what we need!

Waiting with great anticipation!

[Cyricx]

Just to give everyone an update.

My current build has all known bugs resolved. I'm currently workin on the attachment code. I'm bustin on this pretty hard to get a non-beta version released

I actually dreamed about php code last night

[Tralala]

Cyricx... just wanted to chime in with encouragement. I can't tell you how excited I (and my forum's members) are about the prospect of this mod. Comes at such a great time, too, since they're struggling with the transition from a Yahoo! mailing list. Your work could solve so many problems and really bridge a gap that vBulletin has had for a long time now.

So, thanks.

[tekguru]

Well a donation sent from me to