Email Mirror of Web Forum
 

Starting a new thread here, a spinoff of the RSS Feed discussion.

My objective is to get this forum set up as a 'primary' spot for the Dixonary Game, while still allowing users to read/reply to threads via an email client.

I had thought about doing this myself via an intermediate server poasting to a yahoo groups, but there are better options, specifically:

There are vBulletin hacks available to send all posts to email, and fetch email replies from a pop3 server.

NNTP Gateway for Usenet ( Newsgroups ), Mailing Lists supports sending forum messages to a mailing list.

vB Email Reply 0.7BETA fetches emails from a pop3 account and posts them.

Now we just need our wonderful admins to install these! (He says, laughing at how easy that sounds and how hard it will probably be.)

Actually, reading more about that, it looks like it does the reading messages as well. And claims to have an automatic installation. :)

It's on the list to be looked at this weekend.

I installed this. It wasn't too hard. Set up the email group to talk with it. That wasn't too bad. Then I got sidetracked, and never got to the point of turning the whole thing on. So we never tested it. But it looks like you will be the one to give it a shot.

Woohoo!

I'm not a dixonary player, but this discussion made me wonder if it might be possible to subscribe to a whole section instead of to a single thread. So that one could get a daily notice by email of the subject of all threads in a section that had had new msgs posted that day? This would be sort of like doing a daily scan for headers in a section in the TAPCIS program.

From my point of view, such notification would not be as convenient as participating in the forum by email, but still better than what seems to be available right now.

I think I saw some indication a while back that AOL groups (sort of like Yahoo groups) did have an option to access such groups by email, in addition to web view. So if AOL can do it, I don't consider it to be whiz-bang high-tech state of the art, etc.

Not that I'm volunteering to write any scripts, mind you ;-)

David H.

I'll be sure to call on you for help in I run into problems!!

Heck, I might try to learn from your experience. I ran out of steam, and it just sits there. But maybe this will get me focused again.

Hey, you've got an avatar. That's the first one I've seen on this forum. It's cool.

It is possible, and in fact available. I have subscribed to this section and the parlor. This morning the following was in my email in box:
The problem with this from a Dixonary game-playing perspective is that game deadlines run 24-36 hours (per the rules, typically around 30 hours). Waiting for a daily notification of a round and then catching it in a daily email pass might cause some to miss deadlines. And it still requires them to log in to the forum to post.

I have a "better" system for notifying players of new threads. The moderators here have activated an RSS feed, and I have the "rss2email" python script running on my server. Within an hour of a new post in "The Parlor" the first message is copied (truncated) to the game's mailing list. Better than a forum subscription, but still not sufficient for game use.

Some of our players do not have access to web browsers, or pay-per-minute for dial up access, and much prefer to use email because of its offline reading ability.

A full post-by-email system which mails all posts in a section to a particular mailing list, and processes replies from players into posts on the board, is needed to keep those players in the game.

Dan

Thanks. :-)

Between the two of us (and whatever other technical help we can enlist) we ought to be able to get it working.

Daniel,

Thanks for the tip.

I found the forum subscription under "forum tools" at the top of the list of threads in a particular forum (formerly known as section in CIS forums).

David H.

Daniel, is this all you'll need? I don't want to go with more than one hack at a time... (with my luck, I'll break something I can't fix...).

According to the documentation I can see, yes.

Also, this one is a version 2.3xx something, while the other hack was a 0.7 something... in other words, beta. :)

Note that I have no idea how to configure it... I would presume it comes with its own helpfiles and such when you install it. So you're on your own setting it up. :)

Judy,

First, I believe that NNTP gateway is all you'll need. The link I posted claims that that hack "Handles both newsgroup posts and mailing lists". We'll be using the mailing list option.

It also says that the software "retrieves messages from a pop3 account and import [sic] them into the forums threaded."

I've set up a brand spanking new yahoo group for you to use. (No, I'm not intending to undercut the Coryphaeus group, but don't want to spam them with testing stuff until we are ready to go live.)

When you're ready to try testing this, point outgoing emails to: tapcisparlor@yahoogroups.com (feel free to join that mailing list to receive and reply to the test messages). I've set that group up to reply to whoever sent the messages, so that should be from whatever pop3 account you'll be using (presumably theparlor@tapcis.com or somesuch?).

The way I *think* the program works is that when any message is posted in The Parlor web forum, it will be mailed to that mailing list. When people on the mailing list reply, it goes to a pop3 account (theparlor@tapcis.com possibly). Then your bulletin board software will periodically fetch messages from that pop3 mailbox and put them on the web forum in the proper place. (And then get sent out to the mailing list!)

Let me know if you need any help testing... not sure how much "install" help I can provide.

Dan

Judy. The vBulletin license allows for a second installation for testing and development purposes. There are specifics about how and where it can be installed, but this could be your test platform, if you want one.

Okay, I'll work on this tomorrow.

I will certainly call on you for testing! Thanks.

Aha! That's good to know. Thanks for the info.