mail2forum

Yesterday and today I spent some time reviving the 1.2.6 and 2.0.0.a5 versions of m2f. I was stunned by the amount of downloads and interested people and the deadness of mail2forum.com. Why is that? 1.2.6 I got running on the Turnkey LAMP VM with phpBB 2.0.23. Due to the complete lack of documentation on the dead mail2forum.com I used an installation manual that I found on the web for a still older version. EASYMOD broke, so I followed the manual steps. I thought this would probably give me the knowledge to get 2.0.0.a5 running as well in a later stadium. 1.2.6 depends on PEAR and some older DB and MAIL packages. I think I can work them out 'locally' on my hosting provider if needed. It's a mature product with much features. I wonder whether porting this to phpBB3 would be much work. I would suggest to name it 1.3.x, with the 3 of phpBB3. To get 2.0.0.a5 running I needed to switch to a Bitnami-LAMP VM due to the urge of PHP XSL. There is no install-manual whatsoever, so I had to figure it out by browsing directorys and the sparse youtube-video's. I put the m2f-dir in my phpBB3-dir, found a link ./phpBB3/m2f/public/index.php that after some directory-right-setting started to show a picture. I had to force some hard PATHs into the testingscripts and set some phpBB-rights. My first view: 2.0.0.a5 is a concept-driven remake with no user control panel and no detailed options. It's include-dirs are stuffed with lots of other stuff that make things more complex. I'm afraid to get this working without security breaches and reliably would take so much effort that it probably has been the reason of abandoning mail2forum as a whole. Who would like to revive one or the other? Update: Today (december 9 2012) I tried to get the IMPORTANT chain phpBB3 to e-mail running and it gave an error mentioning some import.php for phpBB instead of phpBB3. Looking at the classes in the central m2f.php I saw a lot of UNIMPLEMENTED stuff, so I wonder whether this part was ever implemented. The chain mbox-file to phpBB3 has another flaw: it resets the owner of the file during clear, so I tried setting up a POP3-server. That's rather hard. Due to the lack of implementations of the chain from phpBB3 to e-mail I think the best way of getting this running in a short time will be getting 1.2.6 on-line (unfortunately with phpBB 2.0.23 at the moment, with mod to 2.0.24), and think about a port of that version to phpBB3 for the long term. If you're interested in getting where I got to pull the project into the future You can contact me at Beheerder on Tekenbeetziekten dot nl.

A fundamental part of joining a email distribution list to a forum. Its a phenomenally useful tool, its just a shame they stopped development.