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

[croydon_de]

Hello, i just tried this one, but the e-mails I receive from forum do not show the right way. Somehow the e-mail-Header breaks after the Date:-Header and the rest of e-mail ist shown in plain-text, not HTML, as the Content-Type Flag is not inside of header.

How can i fix this?

Would be a nice thing also to have the choice of getting text-mail instead of HTML...

Regards,
Croydon

Edit : As I have tested now, this only happens, if I write an Post directly in Forum. The posts getting into the forum via mail will be processed correct and work fine...
I think, i messed up something by the template changes...

[David Bott]

Greetings all...

This looks like it will be wonderful. I do have a question that maybe someone can answer efore I install it.

What I am looking to do is setup an e-mail address for Press Releases. Thus companies can e-mail in their press releases to the site.

So the question is, if they do not have an account on the site, how can I handle this?

I need it to come in from ANY address to the press release address and then be added as a NEW THERAD into a given forum. This forum will be closed for new posts as I do not want people replying to the releases and also do not want then to start new threads directly.

Can this be done as the software is now?

Thank you.

[RWerksman]

David,

Pretty sure that it could do that. I'd setup two addresses on the email server - one for the 'posting' address via this mod, and another that actually gets the email. (a dump address)

Setup a press release user and make their email the dump address. Make the dump address forward onto the posting address, and boom, the post should be made under the press release user. I'm not sure how secure it would be though. Maybe a form with some front end checking would help...

Love the sites BTW.

[David Bott]

Hello...

Sounds interesting. Not sure of the result of a forward for based on how it is done, it could add > or what have you to the start of each line.

Yes, security of the use of this did come to mind. Not sure about that one yet either. I am now thinking that maybe anyone with a press releases to publish needs to register for AVS and alert us. Then I give that account some sort of rights or something.

Thanks for the comment on the site. Very busy these days.

[vrwired]

Originally Posted by amphicar770

How do I update existing users, as opposed to new users, to be subscribed to a specific forum.

not sure if you found this, but my hack did work and is described one page back (subject: made a hack to do this) - posted on dec 15th

Cyrix, my hack is only a work around and takes a little time and work, and I wonder if you found that the Auto Subscriptions is not working properly, as I did, before I made the hack. Might want to make sure current code is working for this...

[columbusgeek]

I am killing myself over this one for far too long. The funny part is I read over this thread and wondered how something as simple as email was goofing up everybody.

anyhow, I am getting the dreaded

Warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream {pop.jooxter.com:110/pop3/notls}INBOX in /includes/cron/emailintegration.php on line 83

Failed to connect to the mailbox for forum...

Seems pretty obvious I have a email setting wrong.

Does anybody have a example of their settings for google apps? I have diddling with this most of the morning and still continue to miss something somewhere.

[vrwired]

Ciricx/All,

Has anyone had the problem of getting the same email posting over and over? All subscibers are getting the same email 2-3 times a day. I first disabled task scheduler for email integration, then turn the particular forum off of email integration... same email keeps cycling in.

I've deleted the email (forum) address that the posting is coming from. Hopefully this will resolve the issue, but still wonder how this may have occurred. Any ideas?

[FCS-Webmaster]

I do have some problems with the design of te email I get sent from the board when someone opens a thead or is answering inside.
All is plain text.

If I answer via Email I get a Email with a notification and all is fine.
Wheres the problem?!

I do have the problems with thunderbid also as outlook professional.
Other emails with html are showed correctly.

Please help me out there :erm:

[columbusgeek]

Originally Posted by croydon_de

Hello, i just tried this one, but the e-mails I receive from forum do not show the right way. Somehow the e-mail-Header breaks after the Date:-Header and the rest of e-mail ist shown in plain-text, not HTML, as the Content-Type Flag is not inside of header.

I have that issue as well. Let me know if your figure your mistake out.

[FCS-Webmaster]

Does your email looks like that?!

PHP Code:

From: Postbot <postit@fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de>
Reply-To: postit@fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de
MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/html

Content-Transfer-Encoding: $encoding

Message-Id: <165.377@emailintegration>

References: <165.367@emailintegration> <165.367@emailintegration>

X-Priority: 3

X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<style>

<!--

body {

    font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, helvetica, sans-serif;

}

table {

    margin-top: 1em;

}

td {

    font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, helvetica, sans-serif;

    font-size: 80%;

}

th {

    font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, helvetica, sans-serif;

    font-size: 80%;

}

alt2 {

    background-color: #FFFFFF;

    font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, helvetica, sans-serif;

    font-size: 80%;

}

-->

</style>

</head>

<body><div id="ei_body">ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha<br />

</div>

<div id="ei_sig"><br />

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-<br />

</div>

<div id="ei_links">

<table>

    <tr>

        <td align="center"><a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/subscription.php?do=addsubscription&f=16">Unsubscribe from Coaches Corner</a></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

        <td align="left">

            <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/showthread.php?t=165">View thread in forum (4 replies)</a> |

            <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=0&p="> Reply via forum</a> |

            <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=16">Start a new thread via forum</a>

        </td>

    </tr>

    <tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de">View Homepage</a> | <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home">View Forums</a> | <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/calendar.php">Calendar</a> | <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/memberlist.php">Memberlist</a> | <a href="http://www.fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de/home/search.php">Search Forums</a></td></tr>

    <tr>

        <td align="center">You may reply to this email to post a reply to the forum.<br>You can also begin a new thread by sending an email to <a href="mailto:buchung@fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de">buchung@fellbach-cheerleadersquads.de</a>!</td>

    </tr>

</table>

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

</div>

</body>

</html> 


It seems to be, at the first lines are out of the senteader.

I apologize for my bad language skill and that I didn't hailed to the MOD its an awesome one! Thnx fort the great MOD