January 4th, 2012
Posted by pftq

SMF Mailing List With Attachments, Ticket System, Multiple Address Routing

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.

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. Tongue
- 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. Grin

The complete changes from the original "Post By Email" mod are now:
     - 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. Grin
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