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

[ChurchMedia]

Originally Posted by unitedpunjab

I installed this MOD but m not able to under stand how to create mail box and which email address to use.

Can you explain it bit more in practical way.

You don't create the mailboxes through vBulletin or this mod. You use your site/server control panel (cPanel, Plesk, Ensim, etc.) to create email accounts. For instance, if you had a forum called "Member's Lounge" you could create an email account called lounge@yoursite.com. Then you would enter all the email account info when you edit your lounge forum.

So, you basically end up with a bunch of email addresses for your site/forums.

I hope that helps!

[unitedpunjab]

Originally Posted by ChurchMedia

You don't create the mailboxes through vBulletin or this mod. You use your site/server control panel (cPanel, Plesk, Ensim, etc.) to create email accounts. For instance, if you had a forum called "Member's Lounge" you could create an email account called lounge@yoursite.com. Then you would enter all the email account info when you edit your lounge forum.

So, you basically end up with a bunch of email addresses for your site/forums.

I hope that helps!

I have bought my email domain from Gmail. it's like admin@unitedpunjab.co.uk so can i create email address from my gmail (unitedpunjab.co.uk) account and then can add info about that in this hack.

And can you also tell me the proper settings What information i am going to need from a email account to fill out in ACP on vB.

[unitedpunjab]

Now these are the settings provided by google.

• For POP access, the incoming server is pop.gmail.com or pop.googlemail.com, and the outgoing server is smtp.gmail.com or smtp.googlemail.com.
• For IMAP access, the incoming server is imap.gmail.com or imap.googlemail.com, and the outgoing server is smtp.gmail.com or smtp.googlemail.com.

I have created a account for my domain.

but google is giving me different host names for sending and receiving mails on my domain.

[lionelng]

Originally Posted by lionelng

I've installed this lovely mod but i can't seem to be able to create thread or reply to a thread via email. I'm tried all the 6 different settings but doing without much luck. I'm sure i've got the settings right after having gone through all the posts for this mod. Any help offered will be deeply appreciated.

Anybody can help me with this, please?

[lionelng]

Originally Posted by lionelng

Anybody can help me with this, please?

I really cannot believe this is the type of support i'm getting for this mod. I guess the best way now to resolve my problem is to uninstall this mod. So much so for this mod

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by lionelng

I really cannot believe this is the type of support i'm getting for this mod. I guess the best way now to resolve my problem is to uninstall this mod. So much so for this mod

It's not like this is my paying job

I have an actual real paying day job, plus family, plus a not-for-profit organization that I do ALOT of volunteer time for

I've hit some major setbacks in the next version as well as we just went through the Samhain (halloween) holiday. For most people it may not be a big deal.. but for my personal religion it's our new years holiday

In anycase, I'm sorry if my time is limited and if the value of what your getting here for free is not up to your standards



To address your specific problem..

Have you tried adjusting the "hostname of the above email" as detailed in the instructions? Most common settings for that field are:

localhost
ip address of your server
mail.yourdomain.com
yourdomain.com

If all else fails, you may always send me a PM with admin access to your sites forum manager and scheduled task and I will trouble shoot your settings.

In the long run I'd love to write a script that scrolls through and tests all those settings to try to determine your settings for you, but that's dreaming big right now when I've got some huge projects in my lap for the not-for-profit that I need to hande first.

[Cyricx]

O and in regards to the gmail thing. There is some additional verification crap that google seems to require you to do. I haven't had a chance to dig into the code to address that issue yet

I'm still tryiing to beat the vbmail problem, so it's one monster at a time right now heh.

This is the reason why I hate to give people dates of planned releases.. cuz things always come up

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by kube

Did you fixed it ?

Kube, do you use vbadvanced? The issue is in the url of your smilie. I'd suggest in the smilie manager correcting the url for the smilie to the true full url.

Other then that, I'd have to write a plugin for the bbcode manager to amend those urls. Hmm, that could be difficult...

I'll add this to my ponder list. In the meantime, correcting the smilies in your smilie manager to the full url would resolve this issue.

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by doubleclick

Hey Churchmedia -

Great tutorial for your users. I like the way you got the users to clean up their own excess code/content/gibberish until cyricx codes this into the mod.

I was wondering if you are able to get more than one forum to work. A few of us are having difficulty with this, and it seems from your forum that you have more than one working. If so, did you do something special?

Thanks,
dc

You must have a separate mailbox for EACH forum.

For example if you have the following forums running this mod

Political Talk Forum
General Discussion Forum
Jokes Forum

You'd have to have an email box setup and assigned for each such as:

politicaltalk@yourdomain.com
generaldiscussion@yourdomain.com
jokes@yourdomain.com

This is so that the code can process and assign new threads correctly.

[lionelng]

Thanks for taking your precious time to reply, finally. I've already uninstalled the mod that i've installed with much excitement at first. I like your reasons and i understand your predicaments.

Just like many other mods i've installed, the coder don't get paid for what they've done and as a free user, i definitely appreciate their efforts and time, and i'm not asking or begging for extremely prompt reply. All I can say is others are just doing a much better job.

I rest my case here. I can live without this mod anyway. Good luck.