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SMF Mailing List Mod

Started by pftq, June 24, 2011, 04:01:47 PM

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pftq

Link to Mod

Latest Update: 2020/08/07: Fixed email not sending from poster's name in SMF2 version (missed a line converting from SMF1).

Interactive Demo: http://www.pftq.com/forums/index.php?board=59.0

This modification sets up your board to basically behave as a list serve or mailing list.  The best example to think of is "Google Groups", in that the discussion board still exists while any emails sent to the site are automatically posted or added as replies to existing topics.  The SMF Mailing List mod works best together with the SMF Notify Group mod, which allows you to subscribe multiple groups/members to a thread.  The mod now also handles attachments and routes email replies to different boards depending on the address it is sent to; in addition it allows for non-members to start one-to-one threads w/ staff like a support ticket system if wanted.


     DISCLAIMERS:
      ** This mod does not check for email spoofing when matching addresses to existing members.  It is designed for smaller forum communities where this is less likely to be an issue.


Credits for the original mod "Post from Email" go to Matthew Wolf (a.k.a Grudge).  The mod I've created based off of the original differs in that it actually simulates a mailing list or listserv, rather than just handle emails that might be sent to the board in error.  Much more time and code has also been put into the reply extraction to handle different email encoding formats as well as HTML.  It is also capable of accepting web hooks, or HTTP POST data, for servers that may not have email piping enabled.  The listed differences are:


      - Complete revamp of the reply extraction process to work with many email clients; tested with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Comcast, and numerous others.  HTML emails can be accepted and formatting preserved.  Multiple email encodings supported, including quoted-printable, 7-bit, and 64bit.
       - Works with webhooks / mailhooks / HTTP POST data (enabled via options) for servers without email piping.  Tested with mailhooks.com, cloudmailin.com.  Currently looking to test on more providers - if you know any more, please contact me.
       - Allows replies to any post email (announcements and notifications) by the board.  Notifications and announcements are also formatted like an email thread (previous replies quoted beneath).
       - Sending emails with new subjects (or without the re: prefix) creates a new topic to a default board of your choosing (under Features/Options).
       - New topics started by email are automatically announced (emailed) to members who can see that board, just as a real mailing list would do.  If the number of members able to see the board is large, this might cause a lot of server load by announcing to everyone. Then you might want to either pick a different board to start topics (with fewer members able to access) or disable this entirely (again, under Features/Options).
       - For all announcements (posted by email or board), members are automatically subscribed so they receive replies through email and can reply back through email (can be disabled if you only want topics created by email to function as mailing lists).
       - All posts created through email show the original poster as the sender, rather than the board.
       - Posts announced via the forum can also show the poster as the sender (option in Features).
       - Attachments are supported from incoming emails and automatically attached to outgoing emails.
       - New topics via email can be routed to different boards (and therefore membergroups) depending on the address sent (setup in Features/Options).
       - Optional Support Ticket System; those who cannot access the default board can email the forum to start a thread between themselves and those who can access the board, simulating a ticket system (where those w/ access are the staff).  Non-members and guests can also do the same if the board allows for guest posting.

------------------

Original "Post from Email" mod written By Matthew Wolf (a.k.a Grudge) - [email protected]
Porting to SMF 1.1.x (later versions) and recoding to simulate mailing lists by pftq - www.pftq.com
Some code to close HTML tags in badly formatted emails by Milian Wolff

pftq

#1
The mod has been updated to 1.03:

Main focus of the update is to also affect board notifications for new topics and to respect the profile option to auto-enable notifications for topics you post to.  For consistency, I've formatted the board notifications to look like the announcements and for the announcements to not send to those who already receive the board notifications.

Total changes:
Quote- Extended mailing list functions to include board notifications, previously overlooked.  Special thanks to OldShatterhand for pointing this out.
- Reworded descriptions of settings a bit to group "announcements" and "board notifications" together.
- Fixed SMF bug where announcements are sent even if members already receive a board notification with the topic.
- Fixed to respect member profile settings for auto-enable notifications if they post via email.

pftq

Couple of bug fixes - 1.05 is the stable version now:
Quote20110713 1.05:
      - Updated duplicate announcements fix, which prevents announcements being sent to already notified members, to also include groups from the Notify Group plugin.
      - Fixed announcements not being sent and errors being generated if topic is emailed in (broken by 1.04).
      
      20110710 1.04:
      - Updated to accomodate the Notify Group mod's group notifications (emailing to entire groups instead of members).

Sorry for all the changes the last few days. :P

OCJ

Any chance of this mod working on SMF 2.0 in the future?

Would be a great addition.

pftq

Not in the near future - but I do want to port it over to SMF2 eventually.

pftq

1.06:
Fixed special characters in email subjects not going through properly.

Just replace emailpost.php in the main forum directory to update (no reinstall needed).

luuuciano

Very interesting mod!
Thanks a lot for making and sharing it...

(Ill give it a try when it works on 2.0... and my forum not in a shared account, lol... 500 emails/hour limit is not too much I guess)
No me agradan los foros que no te dejan borrar TU PROPIO usuario, como por ejemplo smfsimple.com.
E incluso te mandan emails no solicitados, de los cuales, quizá, no puedas escapar porque NO te dejan posibilidad a deshabilitarlos (a menos que NO te tengan en su lista negra).

Yiorgos

That seems to be a very interesting mod.
Is there a precaution taken to avoid mass email sending out ?
I mean... is it possible to define how many emails to send out per hour and what will be the time interval between sending emails ?
Otherwise host providers will not be in favor of sending mass emails.

www.sdtv.gr


Abandoned modifications that I corrected to apply on SMF 2.0 Gold
Simple Awards System  To award good members
Limit Posts Per Day  for over-posting members

luuuciano

#8
Quote from: Yiorgos on August 14, 2011, 05:41:56 AM
I mean... is it possible to define how many emails to send out per hour and what will be the time interval between sending emails ?
Otherwise host providers will not be in favor of sending mass emails.

Yeps, that would be great... like working with the smf queue email sending feature...

It would be interesting/useful to have some statistics about email being sent also... like peaks emailsent/hour, daily email sent, etc...
No me agradan los foros que no te dejan borrar TU PROPIO usuario, como por ejemplo smfsimple.com.
E incluso te mandan emails no solicitados, de los cuales, quizá, no puedas escapar porque NO te dejan posibilidad a deshabilitarlos (a menos que NO te tengan en su lista negra).

pftq

It directly uses the SMF announce topic and notification functions, so for SMF1, no (unless you count the few sec delay in announcements).  I'm not sure whether SMF2 has queue, but I will use it if it does.

The boards I use this with are small though, so I haven't run into sending too many emails.

Lucutious

I would 100% use this if it worked in 2.0.

OCJ

QuoteI would 100% use this if it worked in 2.0.
Same here .... waiting for this. I guess SMF 1 support will be discontinued at some time in the future anyway.

opheliagrimm

would love this on smf 2.0 as well.

same goes for your other mod: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=438470.0

smf mail read tracker.

Great stuff

nolageek

Ugh. Need both Twitter Integration and this mod and neither work on the same version. Shoot me. :)

pftq

This is probably one of the biggest updates I've done in a while on any mod.  It took the longest here (several days straight of doing nothing but coding >.< ) but nonetheless very fulfilling now that the functionality is all there.

This is still SMF1.1.x - sorry.  I wanted to get all the features in first before the port but it's done now. :) Just need a break before tackling the huge port job, though if anyone wants to help, I definitely wouldn't be opposed to it. :P

Pretty much all the gaps have been filled on the SMF Mailing List mod, functionality wise.  It basically transforms SMF into a variation of Googlegroups. :P
- It allows attachments, automatically includes them with your posts and emails them out also.
- If you want to set up a sort of ticketing system, you can allow guests to email in questions and start threads that only they can see and respond to (speaking w/ the forum staff of course, not just themselves).
- You can forward multiple email addresses to the mod and it'll route the posts to the proper boards depending on what you set in the options.
- All settings are now on a separate Mailing List Settings page; small detail but it's nice nonetheless. :D

The complete changes from the original "Post By Email" mod are now:
Quote- Complete revamp of the reply extraction process to work with many email clients; tested with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Comcast, and numerous others.  HTML emails can be accepted and formatting preserved.  Multiple email encodings supported, including quoted-printable, 7-bit, and 64bit.
       - Works with webhooks / mailhooks / HTTP POST data (enabled via options) for servers without email piping.  Tested with mailhooks.com.  Currently looking to test on more providers - if you know any more, please contact me.
       - Allows replies to any post email (announcements and notifications) by the board.  Notifications and announcements are also formatted like an email thread (previous replies quoted beneath).
       - Sending emails with new subjects (or without the re: prefix) creates a new topic to a default board of your choosing (under Features/Options).
       - New topics started by email are automatically announced (emailed) to members who can see that board, just as a real mailing list would do.  If the number of members able to see the board is large, this might cause a lot of server load by announcing to everyone. Then you might want to either pick a different board to start topics (with fewer members able to access) or disable this entirely (again, under Features/Options).
       - For all announcements (posted by email or board), members are automatically subscribed so they receive replies through email and can reply back through email (can be disabled if you only want topics created by email to function as mailing lists).
       - All posts created through email show the original poster as the sender, rather than the board.
       - Posts announced via the forum can also show the poster as the sender (option in Features).
       - Attachments are supported from incoming emails and automatically attached to outgoing emails.
       - New topics via email can be routed to different boards (and therefore membergroups) depending on the address sent (setup in Features/Options).
       - Optional Support Ticket System; those who cannot access the default board can email the forum to start a thread between themselves and those who can access the board, simulating a ticket system (where those w/ access are the staff).  Non-members and guests can also do the same if the board allows for guest posting.

You can download the mod here:  SMF Mailing List

Have to thank the SMF team for finally letting the mod go through about year ago and helping make suggestions on the code as well, otherwise we wouldn't have such an awesome piece of work here. :D

pftq

Some additional changes:
20120109 1.08:
- Fixed issue w/ bouncing emails ending in a loop again if emails from non-members permitted. **Fairly critical, recommend update if you accept non-member posts*
- Added option to insert a prefix to all topic subjects created via email, such as "[Forum Board] Subject"
- Added one more blank row to board selection on options, was off by one on the number of blanks needed so that if the board id is larger than the number of boards, it is still selectable (SMF bug? not sure).

Hope to start on a SMF2 version soon but these last updates took more time than I expected. >.<

pftq

Finally available for SMF2: SMF Mailing Mod :D
I expect there will be bugs inevitably, simply from being the first version of the port, so please report any you find.

The SMF2 Mailing List so far should be equivalent to the SMF1 version, with features being and again transforming SMF to a variation of Googlegroups:
- It allows attachments, automatically includes them with your posts and emails them out also.
- If you want to set up a sort of ticketing system, you can allow guests to email in questions and start threads that only they can see and respond to (speaking w/ the forum staff of course, not just themselves).
- You can forward multiple email addresses to the mod and it'll route the posts to the proper boards depending on what you set in the options.
- All settings are now on a separate Mailing List Settings page; small detail but it's nice nonetheless. :D

The complete changes from the original "Post By Email" mod as before:
      - Complete revamp of the reply extraction process to work with many email clients; tested with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Comcast, and numerous others.  HTML emails can be accepted and formatting preserved.  Multiple email encodings supported, including quoted-printable, 7-bit, and 64bit.
       - Works with webhooks / mailhooks / HTTP POST data (enabled via options) for servers without email piping.  Tested with mailhooks.com.  Currently looking to test on more providers - if you know any more, please contact me.
       - Allows replies to any post email (announcements and notifications) by the board.  Notifications and announcements are also formatted like an email thread (previous replies quoted beneath).
       - Sending emails with new subjects (or without the re: prefix) creates a new topic to a default board of your choosing (under Features/Options).
       - New topics started by email are automatically announced (emailed) to members who can see that board, just as a real mailing list would do.  If the number of members able to see the board is large, this might cause a lot of server load by announcing to everyone. Then you might want to either pick a different board to start topics (with fewer members able to access) or disable this entirely (again, under Features/Options).
       - For all announcements (posted by email or board), members are automatically subscribed so they receive replies through email and can reply back through email (can be disabled if you only want topics created by email to function as mailing lists).
       - All posts created through email show the original poster as the sender, rather than the board.
       - Posts announced via the forum can also show the poster as the sender (option in Features).
       - Attachments are supported from incoming emails and automatically attached to outgoing emails.
       - New topics via email can be routed to different boards (and therefore membergroups) depending on the address sent (setup in Features/Options).
       - Optional Support Ticket System; those who cannot access the default board can email the forum to start a thread between themselves and those who can access the board, simulating a ticket system (where those w/ access are the staff).  Non-members and guests can also do the same if the board allows for guest posting.


You can download the mod here:  SMF Mailing List

asfg812

THANK YOU for your efforts! I never said anything here but was also patiently waiting to add it to 2.0.

You rock!
Bugs will get worked through.

Steve

drroot

#18
Nice.

Is there any way to integrate Google Group to the entire forum?
If that is possible, then we would have free mailing list function with no sever overload.

That would be great if one can make it.

Wilo

Hi,

I think thisis the Mod i've been searching for however i'm struggling to find out much information on setting up piping.

Before I can test this on our live server I need to get it running on our dev system internally which means i cannlt use Mail hooks, and we're not using cPanel.

Could anyone please point towards a decent piping configuration info source, or offer me any advise on setting it up.

My forum's running on a OpenSuse 11.3, SMF 2.0.2.

Many thanks,

W.

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