Seamless email integration with forum?

[DaleM]

Hello everyone. I'm looking for forum software that will allow users to *also* use email as their method of communication on the forum.

Getting emails when a post is made in a forum appears to be supported by most software. But what I would like is the user be able to reply to the email and it post back into the thread on the forum (or create a new thread if not a reply).

I'm OK with users having to go to the website and create user accounts and subscribe to those forums they are interested in, but I know some of them will want to post/reply using email - and not have to log into the website/forum. I'm just trying to provide some flexibility to the users.

I'm thinking it would work with a mailing list. For example, when a post it made to a forum it would email the mailing list. But I need replies to that mailing list posted back into the thread.

Can vBulletin provide something like this?

Thanks!
Dale

[Gomjaba]

reply-by-mail-to-thread is not possible with the current version. I am not sure how this can be accomplished at all (IF) ....

You do get a notification if a post has been made in a thread you have subscripted to but if you answer this email it will be send to the admin's mail which is setup as webmaster in the vbulletin settings (basicially the address this particiluar notification has been send with) ...

So no - it is not possible ... I don't even know if it WOULD be possible at all since emails are send to an email server .. so you would need a script which either creates an individual email address every time you open a new thread so the email server know what to do .. or creates several subjects or whatever... but I never heard that an email server can communitcate with a forumsoftware ...

[feldon23]

Unfortunately there is no such system built into or available for vBulletin. There was once an add-on at vBulletin.org but I believe it was abandoned.

I really think this should be developed as a feature. The outgoing e-mail would contain a scrambled character string which would contain the post and thread being replied to and any other necessary information. If someone replies and deletes or screws up that string, they would get an e-mail response telling them to reply without messing up that string.

vBulletin would need to write or bundle a POP3 client to handle this.

[looknow12]

Certainly the requirement of a mail server would be required. The mail server (such as exchange server) would automatically forward [email protected]. A connector could be created on the exchange server to forward fakedomain.net to a specific SMTP port (not port 25) like port 2501 for example.

Then a smtp service utility could be written to listen on this port, break apart the message and directly add the record to the database.

I could do this mod if properly motivated. But would require a mail server that could by domain forward to a specific smtp server port or a different internal server with same port.

The other option is to keep a email program running that collects the replies and have access to that's programs data files. I believe Outlook Express, or Outlook has an open API that allows the reading of a PST file. So a service would run at frequency and collect all replies and post them to the database as well.

[Mastiff]

Certainly the requirement of a mail server would be required. The mail server (such as exchange server) would automatically forward [email protected]. A connector could be created on the exchange server to forward fakedomain.net to a specific SMTP port (not port 25) like port 2501 for example.

Then a smtp service utility could be written to listen on this port, break apart the message and directly add the record to the database.

I could do this mod if properly motivated. But would require a mail server that could by domain forward to a specific smtp server port or a different internal server with same port.

The other option is to keep a email program running that collects the replies and have access to that's programs data files. I believe Outlook Express, or Outlook has an open API that allows the reading of a PST file. So a service would run at frequency and collect all replies and post them to the database as well.

There is a pretty mature mail-to-forum integration for phpBB called "mail2forum". For that you just set up another E-mail account and the forum software uses POP3 to grab and parse the E-mails at certain intervals.

There are clearly security concerns. My approach is to use an external mailing list software, so people can either be on the mailing list or use the forum (people seem to come in two types). Posts to the forum are sent to a single E-mail address that distributes them to list members. The forum E-mail is "on" the mailing list, and anything it gets is posted to the forum. By having access control to both the forum and list, I've never had a spam problem.

It would obviously be way better if you could have more certain thread control than doing pattern matching to the title. That's the downfall of M2F right now, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure how to fix this while allowing some people to be E-mail only, as in allowing E-mail people to start new threads.

If someone could solve this poblem, I think there's a decent market for it. I'd buy vBulletin right away if I could unite my E-mail and forum people using a good forum package.

[looknow12]

There is a pretty mature mail-to-forum integration for phpBB called "mail2forum". For that you just set up another E-mail account and the forum software uses POP3 to grab and parse the E-mails at certain intervals.

There are clearly security concerns. My approach is to use an external mailing list software, so people can either be on the mailing list or use the forum (people seem to come in two types). Posts to the forum are sent to a single E-mail address that distributes them to list members. The forum E-mail is "on" the mailing list, and anything it gets is posted to the forum. By having access control to both the forum and list, I've never had a spam problem.

It would obviously be way better if you could have more certain thread control than doing pattern matching to the title. That's the downfall of M2F right now, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure how to fix this while allowing some people to be E-mail only, as in allowing E-mail people to start new threads.

If someone could solve this poblem, I think there's a decent market for it. I'd buy vBulletin right away if I could unite my E-mail and forum people using a good forum package.

I was thinking about it for new threads. Simply for continuing threads. vBulletin allows users who participate in a thread (either create a new one or reply to it) to automatically be notified when a reply is made to it.

It is these reply notifications that could be sent out with a thread id embedded in the email. A user who just need to reply to this email to add a new reply post to the existing thread.

I don't like the idea of being able to start a brand new thread via email. That defeats the purpose of a BBS's ability to organize messages into nice neat threads.

[Mastiff]

I don't like the idea of being able to start a brand new thread via email. That defeats the purpose of a BBS's ability to organize messages into nice neat threads.

I hear ya, but my situation, and one other admins find themselves in, is that I have a large base of users that are married to the E-mail list format. If I could kill it outright, I would, but some folks just have an issue with forums for some reason. I can't lose these people, so I need a solution that is seemless on the E-mail side while allowing the rest of us to move up to a real forum.

Right now I have M2F linked to phpBB and it mostly works, although some threads become disconnected. Mostly I just hate phpBB, plus M2F is hanging by a thread with only a few developers still on the task.

Ideally, E-mail list posts would just go into the main/general forum, but posts to all forums would go out to E-mail. Some scheme could be used to keep the threads orgnaized using embedded codes or whatever.

[cyburbia]

I hear ya, but my situation, and one other admins find themselves in, is that I have a large base of users that are married to the E-mail list format. If I could kill it outright, I would, but some folks just have an issue with forums for some reason.

I'd like to see some sort of a way that vBulletin can be made friendly to those more familiar with mailing lsits, too. I run an urban planning forum, and as a whole planners traditionally are entrenched in their listservs. My message board gets scoffed at by many because it is perceived as less serious and not as professional as a mailing list.

[Cyricx]

The possibilities that it would open up for vbulletin is amazing if this was coded.

or even if a coder wrote this and offered a paid modification it would still sell like hotcakes IMO.

Think about it, there are 3 basic mentalities in online communities.

Forums - covered by vbulletin... nuff said
Chat - tons of problems out there that integrate with vbulletin and give those chatters their kicks or even a shoutbox to give them their kick and encourage them to post on the forums.
Mailing groups - Yahoo groups is astounding in its dominion on this. I know ALOT of people that donot like forums at all, and like things much more being able to just read their email digests and reply to what they want to or ignore what they don't.

Heck I would pay a nice junk for the functionality even if Vbulletin offered it as a separate addition. There's just too much possibility it would open up for me as an admin and enable my business to grow at a much higher rate due to the ability to please a larger scope of users.

[feldon23]

By the way, I really don't see how it would be possible to handle replying to part of a digest e-mail and having their reply appear in the right place.

Digest is just too complicated.

Only if you have a REPLY HERE area after each post and they are careful to put their reply in the right place.

[Cuddlywolf]

I agree

I completely agree, this functionality would be extremely beneficial to my users. It would increase the number of posts and the ease of receiving the latest post not to mention with more and more people having e-mail on their mobile device, replies to issues would possibly be faster.

I hope to see this in the future and would pay for it if required.

[voter]

If it is allowed, here is a link to such a modification http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92588.