Forums v Email Discussion lists, a suggestion

Another forum

http://www.sitescape.com/forum.html

but don't worry vbulletin, don't think many will convert. It is different and "slightly" more expensive.

Anyway.. why posting?

This is the feature i liked the look of:

Users can email to a designated address, whereupon Forum will post it in the appropriate forum as a new entry.

what do you think?

lots of people out there like using email discussion lists. Personally i hate em but i think it would be possible to turn vbulletin into the ability to have both.

How does it work?

Well people subscribe to a discussion list. This is in fact a forum of your forum.

Say forum name is book talk

When someone posts a thread or a post then everyone who email subscribes to the forum gets an email with the message. Can set it up to do an email for every post, an email once a day or an email say at 25 posts (like egroups).

People can also send posts by email. To do this they send email:

forumname@yourdomain.com

now if the subject is say "Re I like Grisham"
then this post will get added to the thread "I like Grisham"

see what i mean?

This way the forum acts as BOTH a web based forum and an email one. I would love that it would be brilliant. I can think of a few egroups lists that would then convert over to my forum brining in massive traffic and massive member base.

I think the hardest bit is going to be error checking the email addresses (only from subscribed users) and making it easy for a reply to a post so that the post gets put in the forum in the correct place.

I would love to hear suggestions on this. I might install the software i just found (has a free trial) to see how it works. What do you think? I really hope someone is interested in this enough to think about making it. I would love to but please complete ignorance

Half the battle is sending out the email.. Just use the following template:

Forum: $forumtitle
Thread Name: $subject
Reply from: $username

$message


Thread: $bburl/showthread.php?threadid=$threadid
Post: $bburl/showthread.php?postid=$postid#$postid
Reply: mailto:reply_$threadid@yourforums.com

If your forum member has Email Distribution checked then you could send this email to them through the forum system. It might be better to allow them to choose email distribution on a per forum basis. Then once the email gets to your catchall account you need to parse it and put it in the correct location.

I am also worried about how to prevent spam and as well as that, to prevent people assuming others identity.

I want email users to post with username in the same way, now this will just be taken from their return email address but of course this can be fourged so the only thing i can think of it somehow having their password in there as well, is there really any other option? I certainly don't want an email subscriber being able to send a post that say appears to be from an admin because they forged their email address into the headers.

Originally posted by chrispadfield
I am also worried about how to prevent spam and as well as that, to prevent people assuming others identity.

I want email users to post with username in the same way, now this will just be taken from their return email address but of course this can be fourged so the only thing i can think of it somehow having their password in there as well, is there really any other option? I certainly don't want an email subscriber being able to send a post that say appears to be from an admin because they forged their email address into the headers.

vBulletin already has a password encryption function. You can see it when you log in to the system (it shows in the address bar). So why not do something like:

Click here to reply:
reply_$threadid_$username_$encryptedpassword@yourd omain.com

Or build this into the "Reply To" header of the Email. The incoming email address can then be exploded on the underscore and you have it set. As for Spam, It probably won't be much of a problem if you restrict posting to registered members. The vBulletin regististration is shorter than signing up for an egroup or topica account. Plus using vBulletin's security allows you to control access.

Starting new threads are more difficult because you need a mechanism to select a forum. You could redirect them to a custom form with a drop down selection for the forum and have the thread posted there.

Like this:

couple of things:

1) Don't want email reply to links to get too long or they will break apart. So perhaps mailto:threadid_password@forums.com
then the username is determined by the sent from email and the password is matched to that.

Pros : Double checking that it is valid. If someone forwards the message to someone for some reason then it will not work if they reply
Cons : If they try and reply using a different email address. As egroups and topica require this not to happen should not be a problem

2) New threads. I agree problem there. The web idea is ok but one of the most important things is that they do not need to use the web to post.

So you could do at the end of the email:

-- To Post in the General Board
mailto:generaboard_password@forums.com
-- To Post in the Blah Board
mailto:blah_password@forums.com

and that sort of thing. That may work. Only problem is if you have a huge board perhaps, but still this is managable.

3) Sorting out reply stuff.

Going to need lots and lots of checks to make sure that only the new text gets included. Don't want the bottom rubbish, mail headers, large text signautres (very hard) to get included. Also, the problem of when people add a bit of quoted stuff, any way to turn this into (quote) tupe thing. This is not going to be easy i would not think.

4) Advanced Features

--Extra nice things include uploading of email picture attachments and putting them at the end/start of post

ok.. can't think of any more right now!

What do you think?

ok i have been thinking about this more.

Personally i would like to NOT use catch all email if it can be helped (mainly because i use it for something else but i could use a seperate domain if needed).

So it is going to be a matter of putting everything in the subject field. This should not, i hope be a problem.

So it would be something like:

POP3 account (1 needed for EACH forum).

stargate_general@ascifi.com
subject "username_password_threadid"
or
subect "username_password_new-thread"

sort of thing.

An email link in the discussion list would thus be:

mailto:stargate_general@ascifi.com?subject=padders __FG?34sD__3454

make sense?

Do you like this? i prefere it to catch all as easier to manage using subject line. Also means that messages that go to the wrong place (ie replies or no subject line) can easily be bounced back

QUESTIONS:

1) Encrypted password. I someone had an encrypted password could they not easily de-encrypt it if they have a copy of vbulletin? i don't know how it works but i am not sure if it is good it possibly being public is it?
2) Seperator for subject. What should we use? is __ (two underscores ok) if it is part of the username it is going to cause problems so i need a way to prevent usernames having say a double underscore in them.
3) Do most mail programs understand the ?subject= line? any you know that don't?

Any further things? i am going to start working on this once vb2.0 is out. I am already looking for the best info on accessing pop3 accounts etc.

Originally posted by chrispadfield
ok i have been thinking about this more.

Personally i would like to NOT use catch all email if it can be helped (mainly because i use it for something else but i could use a seperate domain if needed).

So it is going to be a matter of putting everything in the subject field. This should not, i hope be a problem.

So it would be something like:

POP3 account (1 needed for EACH forum).

stargate_general@ascifi.com
subject "username_password_threadid"
or
subect "username_password_new-thread"

sort of thing.

An email link in the discussion list would thus be:

mailto:stargate_general@ascifi.com?subject=padders __FG?34sD__3454

make sense?

Do you like this? i prefere it to catch all as easier to manage using subject line. Also means that messages that go to the wrong place (ie replies or no subject line) can easily be bounced back

QUESTIONS:

1) Encrypted password. I someone had an encrypted password could they not easily de-encrypt it if they have a copy of vbulletin? i don't know how it works but i am not sure if it is good it possibly being public is it?
2) Seperator for subject. What should we use? is __ (two underscores ok) if it is part of the username it is going to cause problems so i need a way to prevent usernames having say a double underscore in them.
3) Do most mail programs understand the ?subject= line? any you know that don't?

Any further things? i am going to start working on this once vb2.0 is out. I am already looking for the best info on accessing pop3 accounts etc.

The only complex thing for this is getting a script that checks the pop mail. software like majordomo run in the background all the time and monitor what happens.

This is EXACTLY what we need in this product to push it closer to the top. One good (free!) example of this functionality is www.egroups.com now bought by Yahoo!

Egroups doesn't allow me much control and I want to move to another solution, but the lack of this functionality is keeping me from making the move. If this is going to be done, I'd love to know the ETA so I can figure it into my timing.

Thanks...product looks great and I know it will smoke with PHP and MySQL.

ETA no idea, havn't started. Learning about access mail accounts as we speak but don't expect it this month.

Chris,

I have been quitely trying to find a similar solution on my site. I would love to be part of this. I asked about this months ago http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthrea...&threadid=2532 My cries went unheard I am glad there is a sparked interest in this.

You say earlier that this may be a problem for large boards. I do think that this is something that I would hav eto address myself. I currently have 89 areas to cover. Now I own my server and pop3 is not a problem. I am willing to offer up my server as a test bed as well as my pop server as a test bed for this.

Email me if you are interested in doing this. I know we would rather wait on v 2 and that is cool. But, I have been working with a few friends on my spare time trying to conquer this with version 1.1.3 when I had it. Ever since the preaching of the version 2.0 we suspended any trials in this.

This is a great product already and I honestly think that this would push vB up above and beyond all the competitors. As if it is not already there anyways.


admin@gmforums.com

will email you tonight, cheers.