Merged Mail List Gateway

Searching through Kunena's Forum, there are quite a few posts about sending new posts to Mail Lists and Email Posting back to Kunena. I myself posted about this a back when the first version of Kunena was released. There is a Joomla extension with post via email to Kunena, but after looking at the reviews and the way it is set up, looks to be user specific. In otherwords, only available to one user, STMP, call functions to read incoming, lots of room for error without Python(brains behind mail list functions) integration. Mailman and the others all use the programming language of Python.

Since the developers added the ability for users to subscribe to Categories(WELL DONE!) and receive all posts within a Category, there is possibly an easy way to make this feature available without the post back by email. This might be good enough for most. Would need to add a class, "Mail List Gateway" which would be similar to moderator and make it available as a setting in user control in the back end settings. This would mainly be a setting to determine the output of the message body.

How to integrate it:
Create a user for the forum, for example, "MailList" and use the email address([email protected]) for the Mail List you want to subscribe the Category or Categories to. You will have to use Joomla's user menu if you have confirmation email set for registration.

Log into your Kunena forum with the new mail list user account, subscribe to the Category or Categories. Then log out.

Make sure your forum's email address is subscribed to the Mail List you are pushing your notifications to. Mailman has a whitelisting abillity allowing posts from certain emails, or you can subscribe your email manually and set the subscription for your forum's email address to "No emails" which will allow the post, but will not receive any posts.

I have already tried this and it works, however with a User Subscription, you get an email with a message body aimed towards a single user not a mail list. Current notice format reads like this:

Mail List,

A new post has been made to a topic to which you have subscribed on the Your Wesite's Name Forum

Message: Title of Topic
Posted by: TheUserWhoPostedIt

You can administer your subscriptions by following the Profile link on the forum home page after you have logged in on the site. From your profile you can go to Subscriptions tab where you can unsubscribe from the topic.
URL: The link to the post

Message:

---

.......

A better format could be:

This is a Name of your Website Forum Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list! If you would like to reply to them, please click on the URL link below and respond to them on the forum.

Author: The UserWhoPostedIt
Category: cat name
Message: Title of post
URL: Link to the post

Message

---

Contents of the post..........

Format of the message body is the only reason why you would need a way to mark the username as a Mail List Gateway. We need a way to set the message body differences like they are between User and Moderator. Hint-Hint(custom notifications message bodies per user designation-perhaps 2.0) Suggestions if I'm missing something.

One of the pluses, you could point Guests to a mail list that receives all posts, or category specific posts. Lessen your mail server send load if you have a limitation on sent emails from a specific address. You could also use Google or Yahoo Groups as your mail list server. They have whitelisting ability from specific email addresses or no email settings.

Thoughts???

Tom

There are some really good ideas here, Tom. Perhaps some of the mail message content could be customised either by a judicious editing of the language file(s) or by modifying the PHP source code. But, I agree, the information is presented in a way that is aimed at a single user and not as a listserver-engineered thing.

One problem issue, that probably comes up, is that the end users (the people receiving the listserved emails) probably need to be better informed about the options to unsubscribe to the email. The text

You can administer your subscriptions by following the Profile link on the forum home page after you have logged in on the site. From your profile you can go to Subscriptions tab where you can unsubscribe from the topic.

hardly seems appropriate in the context. However, you're probably able to add your own text at the listserver end when the email is onforwarded by the account that generates the "final" email. I am assuming, of course, that I have correctly understood what you are suggesting.

I'll be interested in the outcome of this suggestion.

One problem issue, that probably comes up, is that the end users (the people receiving the listserved emails) probably need to be better informed about the options to unsubscribe to the email. The text

You can administer your subscriptions by following the Profile link on the forum home page after you have logged in on the site. From your profile you can go to Subscriptions tab where you can unsubscribe from the topic.

hardly seems appropriate in the context. However, you're probably able to add your own text at the listserver end when the email is onforwarded by the account that generates the "final" email. I am assuming, of course, that I have correctly understood what you are suggesting.

Yes and Yes! Mailman and all listserver emails put a footer link to "Unsubscribe" from the Mail List automatically. If you don't want the emails just unsubscribe from the list.

All have a Digest mode too so the subscriber isn't "emailed to death" with topics and replies. They are presented with a list of posts, numbered and the content of them below for easy review.

Tom

Has there been any further movement on this topic? Any plans for the near future?

I, too, am interested in switching from my current Yahoo Groups listserv to a Joomla-based solution - preferably Kunena.

A number of my current subscribers, however, probably won't want to log onto the website forums to participate in conversations. They just want to get the e-mail and respond (or initiate discussions) by e-mail.

Does Tom's solution (above) accomplish this [it looks a little complex, so before attempting it, I thought I'd ask if it would be worth my while) -- OR -- is there going to be an update which will allow my subscribers to participate simply by e-mail, (i.e. anything posted to the forum would be emailed to them and anything they post in terms of a response or the initiating of a new thread would be posted on the web.

Tom, I'm an intermediate user and still need things to be spelled out for me.

Can you list a step-by-step method for getting Kunena Forums/Categories to "sync" with an existing Yahoo (or Google) Group?

I want subscribers to have the option of receiving and submitting Forum entries simply by e-mail if they prefer not to log in to Kunena . . . but I'd like others to move into the 21st Century by having access to all of the features which Kunena offers.

Actually I've half way implementing email to forum feature, but it will be available only for K2.0 and is probably paid add-on (I need to raise some money or I will soon have much less time for Kunena).

It would be a feature worth paying for -- and would probably make Kunena stand heads-and-shoulders above other extensions. I hope to find out about it as soon as it becomes available. I probably won't roll out my new site until this feature is added. Thanks for the good news.

@Matias

when this add-on be available ???

HINT:
make multiple emails,every one for a separate forum.
e.g if the user want to post to { kunena to speak } forum,he will mail: [email protected]

thx

It will most likely be available soon after Kunena 2.0.1 is out.

Thx,a lot
After searching I found an extension that do this feature,howrver I prefer to wait for yours,but I hope not too long: )