E-mail to reply

[Victor Rhee]

Right now, it seems e-mail reply to post seems to be a popular concept. For example, if I comment on something on Facebook, it subscribes me to that "thread." If someone else replies, I get an e-mail stating that someone replied. Now, Facebook has also improved it to allow someone to respond to the e-mail to post the comment on Facebook.

Posterous has also had a lot of success recently with its e-mail to post functionality.

[Wolfie]

Been brought up before. I think one of the concerns, other than security, is that the processing could get confusing between a reply and a bounced email.

[Mark]

This is actually something we've been looking in to recently.
On the surface it's very easy to do... but it's one of those things where if we're going to do it, it needs to be done right - we'd want third-party apps to be able to use it, for example.

[Victor Rhee]

This is actually something we've been looking in to recently.

On the surface it's very easy to do... but it's one of those things where if we're going to do it, it needs to be done right - we'd want third-party apps to be able to use it, for example.

Great to hear.

[Wolfie]

This is actually something we've been looking in to recently.

On the surface it's very easy to do... but it's one of those things where if we're going to do it, it needs to be done right - we'd want third-party apps to be able to use it, for example.

That's good to hear. I'm presuming it would know the difference between a bounced email and a reply/post email?

If so, is there any likelihood that bounced emails would be used to deactivate a members account until they return and update their email address?

[bfarber]

Another problem is that it takes server-side setup, which we couldn't support. We'd basically have to say "do this, and if you can't do it, you can't use the feature". Luckily, I think most users can set it up in cpanel, and most users have cpanel.

[Amy T]

Another problem is that it takes server-side setup, which we couldn't support. We'd basically have to say "do this, and if you can't do it, you can't use the feature". Luckily, I think most users can set it up in cpanel, and most users have cpanel.

I have directadmin as I like it better then cpanel will it work in that?

[bfarber]

Yes

[Amy T]

That will be good then.
I think a lot of people now are used to facebook having this feature.

[Wolfie]

Another problem is that it takes server-side setup, which we couldn't support. We'd basically have to say "do this, and if you can't do it, you can't use the feature". Luckily, I think most users can set it up in cpanel, and most users have cpanel.

Should just require that an email account be created that the board could sign into and 'read' the emails right?

[Connor T]

I'd love the feature. I love ticket systems and forum boards that I can reply to the email and that reply is carried into my post/ticket reply.

[Charles]

This is something we surely want to add there's just a lot of technical and security issues to consider. But yes we bring it up a lot internally.

[bfarber]

I think a lot of people now are used to facebook having this feature.

For what it's worth, this functionality has been around for many years, long before Facebook started taking advantage of it. ;) We've used it with our client area (allowing you to reply to emails of ticket responses to reply to your ticket) for longer than Facebook has, for instance.

[Robulosity2]

heh I tried writing a task + hook for this.. I ended up having to do an emergency restore on my DB ;)

While it will definately be a nice thing to have, I can also see the problems with implementing it.. I also noticed someone asking in another topic how would it notice an NDR.. I'd imagine "if" statement where the return path is <> (return path = Mail From) and by RFC a proper NDR always has a return path of null.. that or a module to the task/hook that permits the Admin to add a list of "bad words" to ignore so it's not inserted into the DB