Topic: Emailing Posts?

Is there a way in PunBB to email posts to the forum? This would allow some members to read and respond without visiting the forum. As I understand, this is possible in that other BB.

2

Re: Emailing Posts?

BenWilson wrote:

Is there a way in PunBB to email posts to the forum?

No, and it is not possible to do it only with a mod


BenWilson wrote:

This would allow some members to read and respond without visiting the forum.

But what is the point  to post without seeing the forum? Sounds like shooting in the dark to me.


BenWilson wrote:

As I understand, this is possible in that other BB.

Oh, that one. smile

I'm not so sure.

I'll tell you what you'd have to do on a *NIX system

1. Write a script that would parse an incoming email for the address, a username/password pair, the text and the forum ID where to put that text in.
Then connect to the database, check the User ID and permissions, then stuff everything to the appropriate place.(ie the right tables in the database)

2. Set up an alias for sendmail/postfix for a specific mail user that will pipe all incoming mails to the above mentioned script

3. Set up a virtual user in sendmail/postfix connected to the alias in 2.

4. Hope that everything works fine.

Short version:
No, I don't think it can be dome easily. smile

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

3 (edited by alastc 2005-08-18 16:24)

Re: Emailing Posts?

Whilst I agree that receiving emails to post is not a welcome feature (to me at least - why not create a newsgroup?), it would be nice if the email alerts that are sent out included the post itself?

Having the (user?) option to keep receiving post alerts even if you haven't been back to the site would be another nice to have.

These aren't going to stop me using PunBB, but they are things my userbase has asked for.

-Alastair

4

Re: Emailing Posts?

alastc wrote:

Whilst I agree that receiving emails to post is not a welcome feature (to me at least - why not create a newsgroup?), it would be nice if the email alerts that are sent out included the post itself?

This can be done quite simply but on a large board it could cause considerable email traffic.

Open post.php and go to line 287 (or around there)

Change

if ($cur_subscriber['notify_with_post'] == '0')
pun_mail($cur_subscriber['email'], $notification_emails[$cur_subscriber['language']][0], $notification_emails[$cur_subscriber['language']][1]);

to

if ($cur_subscriber['notify_with_post'] == '0')
pun_mail($cur_subscriber['email'], $notification_emails[$cur_subscriber['language']][0], $notification_emails[$cur_subscriber['language']][3]);

If I am not completely wrong that should do the trick but I haven't tested.

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

Re: Emailing Posts?

The only easy answer to the "why not a newsgroup" is to say I agree. There are some people who prefer to access a forum via email only, whilst others prefer via the browser. It should certainly be possible to accomodate both groups.

6

Re: Emailing Posts?

But

BenWilson wrote:

to access a forum via email only

is what I call the definition of a mailing list.
A forum is web based, has to be or it's not a forum.
I mean, how to you want to access this board by email anyway?
All you could do is wait for new posts to come or send an email to the server from time to time.

And the first part is already possible, just subscribe everywhere.

As alastc pointed out what you are looking for is a newsgroup, one that looks nice maybe.

But in order to receive emails and sort them accordingly this board would need so many extra lines of code, plus every board owner would need root access to the server or have a very kind host.

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

7

Re: Emailing Posts?

include the reply form in the email to the subscriber, and format it so that the reply can be done i email?  only html email.
havent tried it.. but this could be a simpler way.

8

Re: Emailing Posts?

That brings up another topic:
How do you want to authenticate posts sent by email or by a form sent through an email program?
Every time you send a post this way you would end up on the website tat will ask for your username/password....

Or you allow posts by unauthenticated users. in this case your board will have 10.000 posts within a day I'm sure wink

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

9

Re: Emailing Posts?

I'm looking for the type of functionality that Ben mentions, and, for those of you who don't see the point, consider this:

I need to set up a network of message boards to sit on a company intranet.  All of the staff use Blackberrys, and the problem at the moment is that if they're ill, or trains are running late, they email late@companyname.com, and everyone gets told.

They'd like a message board (for that's what it really is in this case) for notices from staff.  Emails to an address would automatically be posted into the appropriate forum, perhaps depending on the address they've used.

Make sense?

Any ideas how to do it?!

Re: Emailing Posts?

One of the scenarios where posting to a thread via email would be extremely useful is for (volunteer) moderators who work disconnected from the web. The ability for these type of users to respond to posts using an OFFLINE email client (for example while commuting to/from work) and then have their replies sent when they reconnect to the web would be greatly appreciated.

Malcolm

11

Re: Emailing Posts?

Would this work? http://mxsoft.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37

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Re: Emailing Posts?

Looks good - thanks, hcgtv!

Re: Emailing Posts?

Hcgtv,

Re: Maillist Bridge

Looks great! I'll give it a try over the next week.

Thank you very much!

Malcolm

14

Re: Emailing Posts?

Thanks to Max for developing the mod and to the DokuWiki developer list that inspired him to write it.

15

Re: Emailing Posts?

are there any versions that will work with punbo the joomla version of punBB? i would really like to use this mod but when i tried installing it told me it could not find the db, i think it's cuz joomla uses differant table names.

better yet i just want a simple way to turn emails into posts, for automated reporting and what not, is ther a simple mod out there that can do this? any help would be greatly appreciated

Re: Emailing Posts?

I want that too!

Charles.