Forum software with email-to-post capability

[hobbes]

Any suggestions on a simple, PHP-based forum software for intranet use? Software has to support the ability to email a (new) posting, or allow for such an integration.

Thx.

[Juan G]

Perhaps Drupal's Advanced Forum (http://drupal.org/project/advanced_forum), adding Mailhandler (http://drupal.org/project/mailhandler) (to post by email) and some other modules (http://drupal.org/node/227121). I'm not sure that's a simple installation though, unless you know Drupal already.

[hobbes]

Drupal would be major overkill for this. Thanks though.

[Andilinks]

I just cleaned up this list (http://www.andilinks.com/k/forum.shtm) of 92, I hope there's something there that might help.

[kitchin]

Wordpress, baby, Wordpress.

[Juan G]

The email to discussion feature appears in CMS Matrix (http://www.cmsmatrix.org/) (CMS comparison: Drupal, ExpressionEngine, Joomla, Movable Type, WordPress...), but is not reviewed in ForumMatrix (http://www.forummatrix.org/) (forum comparison: bbPress, Invision, phpBB, SMF, vBulletin...).

It seems a common feature in CMSs, not so in forums from what I remember. Apart from the old DiscusWare Discus, a Perl and static HTML forum, not PHP, with many features like that one (post message by replying to e-mail notification) but not very actively developed currently. A simpler solution would be a Yahoo group, of course, or maybe a mailing list with web archive.

[hobbes]

Wordpress, baby, Wordpress.For forums? Do you mean a single-category forum, and use of comments for threaded discussion?


or maybe a mailing list with web archive. Client has nixed this. And Yahoo Groups isn't appropriate for a private intranet.

[Juan G]

I've just seen a vBulletin 3.0 hack, vB Mail Reply (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68113). However, it seems not updated for recent vB versions. Maybe a CMS would be better for this feature?

[hobbes]

There's a new version (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=151222) of the hack, but vB seems overkill for a private board with a couple dozen users. Similarly, a full blown CMS also seems like more than what's needed.

I'm leaning towards just using a simple forum app and developing the email to post feature as it likely just requires a simple DB insert.

[SneakyDave]

That's an interesting feature, but I don't understand how you handle the authentication on new "mail" to the forum, and replies.

EDIT: Ok, read the vB hack, and how it happens. The mail gets sent to a "real" email account, and a cronjob reads through all the emailed messages, and posts them to the appropriate forums/threads depending on header information. But it seems it could be abused.

[hobbes]

Email addresses can definitely be forged, but we're dealing with a private intranet board and a non-posted/non-trivial email address used for postings via email.

The solution we ended up going with is phpBB, which we've used for intranet forums before (tuned for single sign-on), and a custom email filter that uses the phpBB API to submit validated posts. The email address of the sender is verified as a current forum member, and the post is made with that member's user id.