Allow users to send emails to discussion forums

[Kristina Hoeppner]

The discussion thread for this feature wish is at http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3484

Here are the initial two postings:
Hello,

Is it possible for a forum to also act as a mailinglist? Meaning that the user can participate in a forum through their email client as well as on the Mahara site itself (similar to Google or Yahoo Groups). I know that my participation is likely to be higher if a reply doesn't reqiure logging into Maraha each time there is a new post to a forum.

Thanks,

Mike

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I have the exact same question. However I don't think currently that is possible, but would be a great feature for a future Mahara version.

As administrator I receive several replies to the forum messages as direct email messages instead as forum messages, despite the "Please do not reply to this message" warning at the bottom of each forum messge, that seems nobody reads.

I agree that users participation may be increased with the mailinglist <--> forum feature.

Regards, Roberto.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

This seems like a common need. Has any other PHP-based open-source forum software out there implemented this already?

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Also worth reading in that regard: https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Specifications_in_Development/Email_to_Journal

[roberto (roberto-nuevared)]

@ Aron Wells
Yes, for instance the forum software PHPBB (www.phpbb.com) can be integrated with Mailman (www.list.org) using the 3rd-party tool M2f (www.mail2forum.com). It can be configured so that every message in a particular forum is sent to a particular mailing list, and vice versa. Subject lines of emails are used as the topic title in PHPBB.

Maybe you can get some clues from it.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Thanks for the tip Roberto!

Since commenting on this last February, I have become aware that Mahara already has a fully functional email VERP system, which is used in its optional bounced-email detection system. My vague plan was to expand this to handle forum & journal post-by-email.

Some sort of mailman integration is an intriguing direction to go in as well, though. Certainly for a high-volume site that would be an attractive option, because it could ship out all the problems of dealing with a high-volume mailing list, to mailman. We've certainly encountered some problems with high-membership forums, on some of the bigger Mahara sites.