[vB v2.2.1] SMTP Support and MIME/HTML Emails!

This hack adds additional email features to vB 2.2.1

• Allows you to send mail via SMTP instead of using the site wide settings
  in your php.ini.
• Allows you to send email as MIME/HTML with a plain text part allowing
  almost all email clients to view the email in a readable format.
• Any combination of the above are selectable via the control panel.

Latest version is 20020106

I initially wrote this to enable SMTP email and get around a problem I was having with my emails not being delivered to AOL users. I believe it must have something to with my php.ini. But then I decided I might as well expand on the idea.

In addition to the SMTP capability, this hack adds MIME/HTML capablities to vB. There is no need to worry whether a user can read HTML. You simply send send both versions in the same MIME mail. The email client will display whatever it can or wants.

I've noticed a couple of hacks that allow you to send HTML email from vB. Both of them simply add the Content Type: text/html in the header and send it as normal. This is all very well for a handful of the newest email clients, but if the recipient can't or doesn't want to recieve HTML mail, the message is almost unreadable. The two obvious solutions are to either make it user selectable or send both types in MIME format. This hack does both. It allows users to select whether they receive HTML or text emails via the user control panel but sends MIME as default.

This approach required a quite lot of code changes, so for those of you don't want the headache of changing all the code, this hack has two levels of install. You can do the simple install first, which gives most of the features without the user selectable option. If you like it, you can do the second level install later.

Full instructions for the second level install are in the attached zip.



Overview:
There are two levels of installation to this hack. The first method is simple. The SQL commands will make the global settings visible in the control panel under 'vBulletin Options => Email Options' section. It also creates an example template for testing the new reply notifications.

The uploaded file contains all the functions/classes required.

It is then just a case of adding a require() in both global.php files and replacing the existing mail() calls in the code with the new mime_mail(). All the other parameters in the function call remain the same. Can't get much easier than that! At this level, you will be able to opt whether to send mail via SMTP or the method specified in your existing php.ini file. HTML mail can also be sent from any form that accepts input, ie. the mass emailer. Simply enter HTML in the form and the hack will generate the plain text automatically and send a complete MIME message to all recipients. HTML is either globally on or off via the control panel with this level of installation.

The second level of installation requires that you add a few more parameters to the mime_mail() function in addition to what was there originally. This allows you to use HTML templates to send mail where appropriate. It also allows the user to select whether they should recieve HTML mail regardless of your CP settings. You can make these changes without creating additional custom templates immediately. Everything will work as in the basic install. You can then add the templates at your leisure by creating a new one with the same name and '_html' at the end. There a few more lines of code to add for this level of install but it's still pretty straightforward.


The mime_mail() function can be used in other scripts/hacks and takes the
following parameters:
Recipients email address
Email subject
Plain text message (optional) defaults to auto generated from HTML message
From Header (optional) defaults to $bbtitle Mailer <$webmasteremail>
HTML Message (optional) defaults to auto generated from text message
Force Text Only (optional) defaults to FALSE

If either the plain text or the html parameter is null, the correct format is generated automatically from the other one. Obviously at least one of the parameters must be there.



Quick Example:
These two lines will replace the existing mail() function and provide
HTML mail via a new template you created. It will also use SMTP if
specified in the control panel.

eval("\$emailmsghtml = 
      \"".gettemplate("email_notify_html",1,0)."\";");
mime_mail($touser[email], 
          $emailsubject, 
          $emailmsg, 
	  $emailmsghtml);

[Tobad]

Hi,
Just found this hack. Installed it on my Vbulletin forum which is running on Powweb hosting.

Quick Info:
I use to run my own server before and never had any problems. Certain things made me go with a host. To make a long story short, they won't update the PHP.INI to match my SMTP server settings because I'm on the shared server. Right now it just says LOCALHOST in the PHP.INI but the SMTP server is totally separate machine.

I installed this hack and most of the Email To options work now. For some reason, the only ones that seem not to send any emails are the Email Password To User and when a new user registers (the confirmation). Am I missing something? I went through every file (all of them) and made sure that I changed the mail( to 'mime_mail(.

I'm running Vbulletin 2.2.9 right now. At this moment this hack seems to be my only choice. Any help would be appreciated. I'll supply any info needed.

Thanks!

[fastforward]

Originally posted by Tobad
Hi,
Just found this hack. Installed it on my Vbulletin forum which is running on Powweb hosting.

Quick Info:
I use to run my own server before and never had any problems. Certain things made me go with a host. To make a long story short, they won't update the PHP.INI to match my SMTP server settings because I'm on the shared server. Right now it just says LOCALHOST in the PHP.INI but the SMTP server is totally separate machine.

I installed this hack and most of the Email To options work now. For some reason, the only ones that seem not to send any emails are the Email Password To User and when a new user registers (the confirmation). Am I missing something? I went through every file (all of them) and made sure that I changed the mail( to 'mime_mail(.

I'm running Vbulletin 2.2.9 right now. At this moment this hack seems to be my only choice. Any help would be appreciated. I'll supply any info needed.

Thanks!

I must admit I'm not actually using this hack myself anymore. I'll dig it out and see if there's anything strange about that particular function.

[Tobad]

I would appreciate that man. Right now I'm stuck. Powweb support told me to try to put a .htaccess file with this in it:

php_value sendmail_from mail.chicagogamers.com

When I input this to the forums dir as instructed by the tech support...it just errors out my forum.

This is frustrating already as everything else works like a charm with this host.

I searched all over the place and this hack seems to be the only solution so far.

[Tobad]

OK,
I re-read all the post here in this thread and then I noticed the little thing you mentioned about replacing the mail( and the mail (. I originally replaced only the mail(. This is why everything else worked just fine, but the mail ( didn't.

I have made the changes now and everything is working great. So just in case someone is looking for solution being on a shared SMTP, your hack is it.

Thank you.