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

[Cyricx]

Piggo, if you don't mind, could you please send me admincp login with access to plugins, options and scheduled tasks?

To your question concerning the subject line. No currently it is configured to use the forum title. However, I'll toss in a tweak to let you set it as something different per forum. That won't be released til I solve these last few bugs that ironically are not happening on my site LOL.

They gotta be conflict errors.. but don't worry... I'll keep at em!

Tek, I'll install that mod on my test site and respond to your pm as well to discover the issue. I really didn't change hardly anything in the script other then adding the function to send emails for subscribed threads, but that was straight outta the functions_newpost.php file so...

I'll figure it out though

[Piggo]

Thanks Cyricx,
PM sent.

For some reason, some of the issues seem to have resolved themselves, although I haven't run a manual cron job since yesterday.

[Cyricx]

Most likely they didn't resolve themselves, or it may have been issues with duplicate subscriptions that the script fixed as it went.

I'm betting it's just very obscure criteria that are causing them.

Thank you for sending me the info, I'll fine tooth comb things and see if I can locate a spot where the issues are occuring.


Seriously.. thank you all so much for the bug reports. None of these issues are appearing on my site, so without the bug reports.. I'd never know about them. if anyone is experiencing similar issues, please let me know. It can help sometimes to compare sites that are having the problem to be able to see similiarities that will help me narrow down the issue.

Particularly if it involves conflicts with other modifications.

[tekguru]

No probs Chris we are bearing with you. Admin access now granted for you on site.

[droid101]

Okay, this seems like it can be molded into what I want for my forum, but I'm not sure.

What I'm looking for is something so people can take a picture with their phone, then text (preferrably) / email it to an address / number (preferrably), and have it start a new thread.

I don't want them to be able to reply to threads via their phone, so that's not necessary.

Also... I would like it to somehow show who is doing the posting, by somehow linking the phone number to the UserID or something.

Anyway, I know this is an odd place for a request, but I was wondering if you think this system can do that? Or if there is another hack anyone has seen similiar?

Also, how does this show the username? From the person's registered email address?

Thanks!

[Cyricx]

It shows the username from the registered email address. Which means the email address would have to match that of the phone.

I'm don't think it would be able to do exactly what you want without alot of tweaking

The thing that I've seen closest to what your wanting is Photopost has a modification that lets you upload pics from your phone.

To modify this code to do that, I would think you would have ALOT of loose ends to tie up.

[droid101]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

It shows the username from the registered email address. Which means the email address would have to match that of the phone.

I'm don't think it would be able to do exactly what you want without alot of tweaking

The thing that I've seen closest to what your wanting is Photopost has a modification that lets you upload pics from your phone.

To modify this code to do that, I would think you would have ALOT of loose ends to tie up.

I figured. And I was actually already in the market for PhotoPost anyway. So if that'll do the trick, then I think I'll be set.

But this mod is very tempting for all my users who have "I hate messageboards" in their signatures.

[Cyricx]

That's definately the aim! Now I just gotta get the obscure and/or conflicting bugs resolved

[rodneytamblyn]

Hi Cyricx,
I've just updated to 2.6 today. When I click on Auto Subscriptions in the Admin CP I get a MySQL error in vB.

Any idea what's going on here?

Thanks

~ Rodney

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.8:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT title FROM forum WHERE forumid =;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1
Error Number : 1064
Date : Monday, February 25th 2008 @ 07:31:39 PM
Script : http://[removed]/admin_ei.php
Referrer : http://[removed]/index.php?do=nav

[Cyricx]

One of your usergroups is setup to auto subscribe members to a forum, but you have not defined the forumid

I now have a fix coded in that halts the attempt to save a usergroup with those settings with 2.6 So just open up your usergroups and check each, or open and try to save each one and you'll get the error message

I'll add an error message into the auto_sub script for 2.7 for if there is not a defined forumid to tell you which usergroup to correct