The biggest feature needed....

[chrispadfield]

Ok this whole thing about instant community is brilliant, but what is the biggest community interaction thing, email.

I know it has been mentioned before a bit but an email --> pm gateway is really a major feature that would be so so so so useful for an awful lot of us i would think.

I am going to list some features i have thought about, let me know what you think. Also a possible way for it to work. This is a big hack, beyond me (as it would need to be optimized and be very efficient):

HOW IT COULD WORK:
- I think it should work of the catch all email account. This would also mean that the catch all domain being used could be the same one as the forums use or a completly different one.
- Every 5/10 minutes a cron job is run to check a POP3 account (only 1 needed, everything in there from catch all).
- The script then runs through the email and adds to whatever new email table we are going to use, it then deletes the messages from the POP account.
- Afterwards, all outgoing messages are then sent as well. As this process is going to run quite regularly (5 mins or even quicker) it needs to be efficient!
- For the user i think the email system should be an extension (ie replication) of the pm system. The pm system has got a bit more complicated with some of the changes to it so i would think a different set of tables would be needed and in the interface emails would be clearly different from private messaging, with another "tab" for emails sort of thing but listing "new emails on homepage".

FEATURES:

Admins:
- Set number of messages to be stored
- Set freqency of email delivery/sending. If reached, an auto-reply sent
- Set a standard signature
- Set maximum number of emails a user can send in x time
- Set general spam filters
- Multiple domains?
- Allow email forwarding?

General:
- Email failed delivery sent back to originater if user does not exist

Users:
- Specific spam filters
- General features we have for pm --> folders, moving etc...
- Remote collection of other POP3 accounts (manual import).
- Have email forwarded to another email account
- Set signautre
- Address book
- Vacation reply

and I can think of more. Personally (this won't be popular with everyone) this is a hack i would be willing to pay for if it was done well (and soonish). It is a major enhancment to the system and not really part of a forum but something that would fit in very very well. A price of $50 would definitely not be unrealistic and I would pay straight away.

I would love to hear comments on this, it is a feature that would just be so useful I wonder if jelsoft have it on the "to do" list and if not is there someone enterprising out there who wants to make a product to link in with vbulletin.

[chrispadfield]

Oh buy the way...

issues to consider

- Users with usernames that will not work as email addresses. This is a significant problem. I can only see two solutions:

i) run a script that changes people's username that won't work to one that will work. Then prevent "weird" usernames upon signup
ii) if you have a weird username somewere you have to set up an email account to use.

- Attachments. Going to allow incoming/outgoing?
- Deleting messages that are too big.

Also...

I would realy like it if email could be one of those features that can be "upgraded" for subscribers. The best email upgrade is to allow POP3 collection but this is going to be very hard it we do catch all email. Webmasters could for sure set up a POP3 account for a user who gets one but then they won't be able to get the email online, a work around for this might be:

- admin lists pop3 accounts specially created and associates with a specific user
- these emails are NOT download automatically like the catch all ones are but when the user goes into their control panel, the script checks their individual POP3 account and they don't notice the difference- this could really work.

Also, override settings on things like max messages, attachments allowed, incoming message size, emails per time etc per user would be nice so you could set higher one on an individual basis (or perhaps through an email access level group type system).

These are just all thoughts...

[MrLister]

I'd love that! but who here would make such a thing because it is a major hack.

[dabean]

Firstly i'll point out i have been working on and off on such a script for the past 2 weeks. I still have a massive amount of work to do before its even near release quality.

There are few really big design decisions that have to be taken before anything like this is writen. For the record i've taken the approach to reuse as little as possible to make forward compatiblity as simple as possible.

Firstly do you resuse the existing vB privatemessage table or create a totally new table.

Advantages of a new table are you can index the fields that are important for email, and store message format (mime or text).

Disadvantage is you either end up with a uberhack that requires massive maintanace as vB advances, or a standalone hack that confuses end users by offering two similar systems.

Advantages of table resuse is that the end message display and listing code is far simpler. you can resuse vB almost as is.

Disadvantage is that you either need to alter the table structure or make a new additional table to store the sender email address.

Then on to the second really big problem, how do you store all the user preference settings...
As it stands it's complex to add radio button or dropdown list choices to user profile fields. So to store everything thats nessesary for email you need a second profile store.

The email system its self needs to store a lot of settings so you'd again need to create another table to hold those.

On to sending and recieving mail..
recieving via single pop3/imap4 account is simplest way to get all the messages.

But to send them rather than attempt to mange your own send queue and all fun that intails. Using the mail sending functions builtin to perl/php is way easier, (spoofing the from field where and if nessesary).

There are some tricks you can do with an address book to keep its size down but still its a huge addon feature.

The weird username problem can be coded round almost transparently to user, spaces can be _'d, @'s turned into at's, #'s changed depending on context etc.
or you can use go on userid number and totally sidestep the problem.

Finnally these are features i've got working so far:
- plain text email collection and filing userid based (xxx@you.com) partial filing of text usernames.
- unknown user forwarding or autoresponce (configurable).
- Sending via the same page as pm sending (right to left @ processing)
Still todo:
Message display and message index display.
MIME support
admin options
etc..

[chrispadfield]

it is brilliant someone is working on it, good luck it will be a killer mod

[thewitt]

I would approach this as two separate projects.

The first would be notification of new messages to anyone subscribed to a thread. The only thing you need to do differently from what exists today is to include the body of the message in the mail that is sent out - and keep track of who received mail about what posting.

You don't want to send two messages to someone who is currently receiving posts when a reply is posted in a thread they have posted in, but the options are simple and easy to manage.

The second portion would be to allow email responces to posts that get added back into the thread. This is a much more difficult piece and I'd do it second.

There is no need to include images in the outgoing email. A link to any attached image would be fine.

Makes the first release of the hack something fairly easy to do, and get in the field for comment...

-t

[chrispadfield]

thewitt, this thread is about a email gateway into vbulletin for general emails so you can have username@domain.com - not the thread about allowing forum participation via email which is different.

[thewitt]

Originally posted by chrispadfield
thewitt, this thread is about a email gateway into vbulletin for general emails so you can have username@domain.com - not the thread about allowing forum participation via email which is different.

Silly me. No wonder it did not make sense when I was reading it.. I thought it sounded like a very difficult way to implement email participation!

-t

[limey]

I know of many sites (sites like yours that included free emai lfor users)

where it became more of a headache then it was worth. FBI got involved with people abusing free accoutns and so on.

Gotta wonder if its worth it to a smaller player like ourselves if its a major problem for big players?

[dabean]

I presume your refering to a FBI study saying 97.3% of fraudulent orders are coming from free-service email addresses.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are not problems when sufficient checks are put in place and a script is designed to comply with local/international laws for the US this is currently "Allowing the retrival of stored email through an administrative subpoena, which does not require a judge's signature, that is sent to a company or Internet provider and when law enforcement asks an Internet provider to disclose email content or other electronic communications, the person under investigation must be notified at the same time the warrant is served."

The big providers have problems partly because of the widespread use of their domain names. I'm sure you've seen how some people just make up <somethingcool>@hotmail.com for forms and how most spammers seem to use aol or hotmail or yahoo addresses, and also because at one point they did not require personal information and what little information they collect wasn't fully validated.