SMF Mailing List - Discussion and Feedback

[Roswenthe]

I'm sure now. :/

Thank you for contacting support. Your control panel is VDeck, not CPanel. Additionally, we do not provide custom coding. If we can assist in another matter, please let us know.

[pftq]

It helps to know that the control panel is VDeck rather than CPanel, but I'd think there must still at least be a way to pipe emails to a file.  The response from your host is a bit strange if you asked them to merely add an email forwarder that pipes to a file on the server (there isn't really any coding involved).  Maybe ask them again to make sure they didn't misunderstand your request.

The other option I can think of would be to edit a file via FTP to add the forwarding but that depends a lot on how your server is configured.  For example, you can try adding the forwarder via a .procmail file if your server supports it.  If you search for email piping without cPanel you get a number of approaches on Google.

This is really guessing at the problem though without knowing more about your server configuration.  I would try to find a way to do it through the control panel first.

[Roswenthe]

I gave up on that. I needed to create a new professional domain anyway, so I went ahead and did that. I was rather unhappy with that host, especially with that response, which I found rude and unprofessional, especially since I've been running on them for several years now.

I'm not getting the posts to show up, though. I chmodded the file just in case, and it's routed to the correct address as far as I can tell. It might be that the domain's just a bit slow since it's new, but I'm not sure if I did something wrong.

[dakotaroar]

Just an update that the mod is pretty solid now (I've basically rewritten the way it handles the email messages).  It handles both HTML and plaintext so you can keep the formatting if you want to; it even allows message forwarding.

https://www.pftq.com/smf-mailinglist/

The only thing I have not looked into is attachments, but I'm not too sure I want that (security reasons as well as just being too much load on the server to parse the email).  However, if the email does contain an attachment, the script disposes of it properly so the reply is still kept.

I've uploaded the mod to the SMF site.  It seems to have gotten reviewed but I need the original author's permission before they'll approve it.  Just waiting for the author's response now.

I might start on the SMF2 version when I get some more time.  Just wondering, but did you manage to start on a SMF2 version or should I start porting it from scratch?

Thanks

No, I have not made any significant progress in making this into a 2.0 mod.  From what I understand, it should mostly be changing the functions around, and so if you know how they are supposed to work it shouldn't be too difficult.  Apologies for never getting around to this.

[pftq]

@dakotaroar: Ok no prob - just wanted to check back with you incase.

@Roswenthe:

Two things:
1. Are you getting any errors in the Forum Error Log (Admin Panel)?
2. Edit the emailpost.php by finding "$debug=false;" and changing it to "$debug=true;".  Then send another email to the forum and check if forums/test.txt is generated.  If not, the email piping is still not sending to the script.

Some possible issues I've come across in the past are:
- Making sure the CHMOD is 0755 and not 0777 or anything else. (I know you said you changed it manually but just a mistake I've found on my part sometimes).
- Making sure the first line in emailpost.php corresponds to the PHP directory for your server (usually the same but can vary).  I'm not aware of a way to find out on your own, so this would have to be checked with your host (and maybe from their response you can be sure piping is at least enabled).

[Roswenthe]

Yes, I am getting errors, but I assume these are because I hadn't changed the language files yet? They are all 'undefined index'.

8: Undefined index: mailingList_HTMLemails_help
File: /Sources/ModSettings.php
Line: 251

I rechecked the chmod and the path to the php directory (luckily the host has a nice page listing all the paths).

There is no test.txt, so it does seem to be the piping. No errors listed after I tried the other things and tried sending it again.

[pftq]

Hi, you are correct about the language files.  Those are needed for the Admin Panel as descriptions of the options but the issue is unrelated to the piping one.

At this point it's hard to say what might be the problem without helping work on the site myself.  I would ask the new host support if they can double check that piping is enabled for your account though and what the correct path to PHP would be for the script, just to be sure.  I've set up forums on a number of other hosts where everything seemed to be correctly in place (no errors/bouncebacks), only to later to find out that scripts in email piping were not given access to the PHP and MySQL modules so they couldn't run.

Just to go back over incase we missed anything though, can you tell me what path you put for the cPanel forwarder exactly and what path to PHP is at the top of your emailpost?

Sorry this is taking much longer to set up than I was hoping.

[mary]

I'm having the same problem as the previous user.  Cannot forward to anything other than a "valid email address".  Contacted my host and they said that functionality is not implemented.  Can you think of a workaround?  I would really like to try this mod.

Thanks!

[pftq]

Hi, the basis of the mod is to use the email piping available on the local server, but I will look into other options such as the smtp2web mentioned a few posts before.  However, I cannot promise when or if I might have a working version up since this does change how the mod fundamentally works.

[pftq]

Hey all,

Just an update on looking into alternatives to email piping.  The mod should now be able to accept emails from services like smtp2web or mailhooks as well (HTTP POST).  However, I noticed that among the servers I tested on, the ones that didn't have email piping enabled also didn't allow HTTP POST.  If you still want this version a shot, I can attach it here.

I'm not releasing it so far because I'm not sure yet if it behaves identically to the original.  Will have to test it more but that has been a bit difficult since I don't have too much access to servers that can handle the HTTP POST method.

[Roswenthe]

I can test it. I don't currently have anything on the forum I'm using to test it.

[pftq]

I did some more work on the mod, and using HTTP POST actually seems quite stable (very good news as people don't need email piping on their own server then!).  However, I've only been able to find one provider, which is MailHooks.com.  I tried SMTP2Web but I haven't been able to get the account properly set up, let alone test it with the script.

Theoretically it should be the same - would be quite chaotic if every provider had their own way of relaying the data, but we'll see.

Newest version (.994): https://www.pftq.com/smf-mailinglist/

Let me know what provider you end up using and how it goes.  Also change $debug= to true at the top of emailpost.php to more easily find problems if they occur.

Thanks for your help!

[pftq]

If you downloaded before the message, replace the emailpost.php with the new one.  Nothing major but I forgot SMF adds backslashes to post data (so quotes look like \").  No reinstall needed, just replace the emailpost.php.

Thanks again - and definitely let me know how it goes.

[Roswenthe]

Works like a charm! Couldn't make it work with a traditional email, but it works fine with MailHooks.

[pftq]

Awesome - glad that was taken care of.