Posting by E-mail

Malveka · Post by **Malveka** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 9:32 pm

Is it possible with phpBB3, either out-of-the-box or via MOD, to support the creation of posts by e-mail? We currently have phpBB3 rc5 installed and I have found nothing in the documentation or on the administration control panel that leads me to believe this feature exists out-of-the-box.

To clarify, I want to have the ability to send an e-mail to a specific address and have that e-mail posted in an existing topic or create a new topic. I suppose the target forum and topic would be controlled by some form of tags in the subject line or body of the e-mail.

Does anything like this exist?

Thanks for your help!

Mal

dellsystem · Post by **dellsystem** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 11:58 pm

No feature like that exists in standard phpBB3, and I haven't seen any MODs that do that.

Moved to MOD Requests to better faciliate a response

Good luck

Dave Bean · Post by **Dave Bean** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:46 am

You didn't say why you wanted to be able to post by email, but I've been wondering the same thing. In my case, I would like to integrate the discussion forum with a listserver and have a post here in the mod requests section:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 2&t=586078

My opinion on listservers has changed. I used to hate them and somewhat still do because they are hard to organize and find archive material. However, recent experiences with listservers have made me realize that they are proactive and really help build communities.

I've been using Yahoo Groups recently and I'm very surprised that there are few php listservers out there - maybe majordomo, but looks complicated.

I seem to be alone in my thinking, but it seems like in some cases marrying a list server with a discussion forum would be fantastic.

You might check the 2.xx mods, seems like I've seen post by email discussed before someplace. If you find anything, please let me know.

Good luck.

..... just ran across this - investigating - don't know anything about it .....
http://www.mail2forum.com/forums/index.php
"Mail2Forum (or M2F) is an add-on software to the phpBB forum system. M2F combines the functionality of a mailing list system and a phpBB forum in order to add bi-directional 'email to forum' and 'forum to email' communication."

.... also maybe this one:
http://forums.phplist.com/viewtopic.php?t=8268

Malveka · Post by **Malveka** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:29 pm

Dave,

In my case the forums are running on our company intranet and we are looking for a means to get additional content into the forums for reference purposes. Since a lot of discussion is already taking place by e-mail, it seems a natural fit to attempt to capture some of that discussion to seed the forums and to supplement already existing topics. Some of this discussion does utilize a list server, so I agree with you - there is a role for both, and building bridges between the two seems very useful.

Thanks for the pointers to the MODs! A brief perusal leads me to believe that they are, as you mentioned, both for phpBB2, but perhaps they could be adapted to phpBB3. I'll look into that.

Regards,
Mal

Dave Bean · Post by **Dave Bean** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:51 am

Yes it would be so handy to just send an email to a special email address to have it added to the forum. Please keep me updated with your ideas.

Dave

Willoughby_wx · Post by **Willoughby_wx** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:04 pm

This would be a great MOD; personally it'd be great for me to text for example, weather reports to the forum when i'm far away from the computer.

Dave Bean · Post by **Dave Bean** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:03 pm

I'm coming from the perspective of hating listservers, so it is impressive that I'm becoming more interested in listservers each day. It is not because I like the structure - I don't.

The hardest thing I've tried to do on the internet is build communities. Listservers provide more pro-active 2 way communication that encourages participants to stay engaged. I've done quite a few message boards and I suspect I'll change the ones that I have to integrate someway with a listserver and not put up another one that does not utilize a listserver. Pretty strong words from someone that did not like listservers, and probably only works with certain activity levels. It's all about successfully building communities.

In effect, if you have notify on replies turned on, this thread is a mini list server on this topic.

Other than http://www.mail2forum.com and majordomo, has anyone found any other php code that acts as a listserver script? Newsletters yes - phplists.com , but hard to find listservers.

I'm excited. PM me with contact info and let's hookup.

Malveka · Post by **Malveka** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:53 pm

Here's some additional info about the possibility of using Mail2Forum with phpBB3:

http://www.mail2forum.com/forums/viewto ... 495fb16d35

Appears to be on its way, but will not be available in the immediate future. Still, it looks promising...

Mal

georgecrawford · Post by **georgecrawford** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:11 pm

Hi,

As the developer for mail2forum, I can reiterate that we plan to support phpBB3 as part of our redesign. Version 2 of our application will allow a many-to-many relationship between any number of message formats, email (POP, SMTP, mbox, etc), RSS, NNTP, forum (phpBB2, phpBB3, vBulletin, etc), as well as mailing list and mass mail functionality.

We're hard at work and have released a functional but feature-limited alpha, but desperately need development help. Any interested parties might like to check out this post on our forum which contains a few videos of the alpha release in action, and links to other discussion areas.

Please direct any questions to the forum at http://www.mail2forum.com

Malveka · Post by **Malveka** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:46 pm

George,

Thank you for posting here and letting us know about your plans! That's quite helpful. I'll be checking out the videos as soon as I get an opportunity. The features in the upcoming version 2 of mail2forum sound great.

Regards,
Mal

georgecrawford · Post by **georgecrawford** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:17 pm

Please see the discussion topic on the phpBB 3 MOD Development forum.

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