Just came to an idea today, say i have vbulletin forum and i want to pipe an email that whenever new mail comes to certain address@mydomain.xxx it will create a new thread into the forum using the same subject and body goes into new post/thread including email header.

just for archiving purposes, would that be something easy todo? say a script that connects to pop3/imap account every 5mins and create posts/threads based on messages?

Thanks :)

this would be possible if you're able to set up cron jobs (or the windows equivlt. if that's your choice of poison). Take a look at how your forum setup currently records posts, and duplicate that functionality - you may also wish to create a table for recording messages that have been posted. Feel free to PM if you have any further questions, the whole process is a bit hard to put into a message, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

yeha i know its possible, just need to connect to pop3 or use the inbox file and start cutting the message into data and inserting them into a table or into a datafile which will then create a post/thread in return.

the question how ;)

qmail can do that on the fly bu using the .qmail

Not too sure about other SMTP server, but I sure there is alot of workaround with other SMTP server to do that without using cron jobs.

Let us know what kind of SMTP server are you using, then someone can help you to looking further..

well i have cpanel box ready but can switch to any other smtp if required.

I've seen this available for phpbb, so I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't something at vb.org? Also, might the simplist thing be to compare how Irwin's form to post works then look at piping in that format?

neve thought of searching there, but yeah found it!

Thanks :D

oh yeah here is the link http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40595

There is a program that does this for phpBB already, mail2forum, http://www.mail2forum.com/

If you want to build it on your own, you might want to use one of the PEAR mail packages to help, http://pear.php.net/packages.php?catpid=14&catname=Mail

yeah but i'm using vbulletin.

Thanks Matt

That'll be me confusing the issue for a change :p

Tell me, are you using vb2.x? Is it ok to use this version still? I downloaded it the other day and tried to get the opposite of what you are doing (posts including new threads to email) for an announcement system. Using the above hack would have some very interesting possibilities!

Having read to the end of the thread over there, I'm guessing you use vb3 :P

yeah :D hopefully it does what i need.

i dont want uses to reply via email, i want some system emails to be piped into posts/new threads for searching/archiving purposes.

Its not hard at all if you are familiar with email piping, which up to this point is still considered rocket science to most people.
This was due to the lack of documentation.
I spent 3 weeks perfecting it.
Once perfected, you can parse the email and save it as a webpage, forum posts or even translate it into other languages before sending it as an email.
VERY fun to play with. :D