UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 6 V6 Modifications Forum Design Integration TWE ....

What I expect TWE to become...

TWE will stand for Threads Windows Email.

I was looking for ways to enhace my community and came up with a product called MailEnable which is free (not the Pro version) and does all I wanted to have a full blown SMTP and POP3 servers (along with a List manager).

I purchased HiveMail and integrated it (a bit) with my threads installation but then I wanted more from it. HiveMail works with a single CatchAll account and a cron task (or scheduled task in Windows) allows for all the emails to be delivered to the respective database or file driven mailbox.

However I wanted to allow my users to work with POP mailboxes as well so my needs outgrew HiveMail. To alter it to work with individual mailboxes would require a lot of modifications and I wasn't prepared to go to that length.

Hence my knowledge about COM objects and my Visual Basic days allowed me to access all the MailEnable objects from PHP itself.

So far I have created a class which accesses all the basic features of MailEnable (create/delete/update a new postoffice/domain/mailbox) and it works like a dream.

I have created new files that will go to the admin section of threads with minimal alteration to the database and to the existing files. Actually there will be only one include directive to the admin/menu.php which will enable the Email management menu.

What it will do once it is all completed:
- Allow admins to create as many postoffices as they want (you will most probably only need one)
- Allow multiple domains per postoffice
- Create a mailboxe for a user, or users in a group or all the users in the database.
- Allow users (on/off by admin) to access their email using a POP mailbox
- Use the Threads login features to access the mailbox
- Save the sent emails in a separate folder
- Allow for certain properties to be set by the user like redirection addresses, signature and various other settings from their My Home.
- Check the mailbox (like the private messages system) every X minutes (customizable) and alert the users of new email.
- Use the threads templates to display the emails in a list
- Use the threads templates to compose new messages

At the moment this will work only for Threads installations for Windows, since it integrates with the MailEnable mail server. However once I have the full addon ready I will work (hopefully with some help from you guys) on integrating it on Linux systems. I hope to use oo programming which will allow total transparency to the admin whether this system is a Windows one with MailEnable or a Linux one with SendMail etc.

That's all for now. Now the bulk work is left to designing the templates and parsing the mail messages.

Stay tuned.

Sounds cool Nikos, I look forward to the results

*rubs chin and lowers eyebrows*

Very interestingk

Nikos, is this what you're doing with mine?

No Aaron. We are using @Mail on your server. You are more than welcome to use this once I finish it

The first stage:

Post Office Management in the Admin area

Oohs and Aahs from the crowd commence.

I integrated SquirrelMail into Threads; if a user selects "Save My Password"; then Threads puts a banner up saying "You have X new email messages!" when they have email waiting.

It uses Squirrel Mails Web-based client, but I dont allow POP access to my server. We've had some success with using it, its a very rebust email client.

http://www.viperalley.com

nikos, but we are integrating it the same way, correct?

Nikos looks good!

Michael, Ooh I use squirrel mail. Were the changes complex?

The only problem guys is that you cannot find a proper free IMAP server for Windows. There is Mercury (and I think Exim but I have never used it) but the installation of it is really clumsy and it cannot be easily uninstalled or administered. If I had a proper IMAP server that I can administer the way I wanted then the integration with Squirellmail would be a walk in the park so to speak.

Hey Nikos.. not sure how soon this is due out, but a POP3 module for hivemail is coming out in a very near future version I believe But I do like what you have so far, looks great.

Really? That should be interesting... However I don't know how this will be used for hivemail. I think I need to pay a visit to the forums there.

I guess I am no more than 2-3 weeks away for an alpha version (because I am not working on this full time rather than a couple of hours a day). I need a solid day for fixing the whole admin area and following that it will be a lot easier to integrate. My main consideration is for this mod to be a pure add-in with one or two alterations in the threads files and nothing more. This way it can be installed on the fly for those who want to use it.

The changes were so much complex as difficult to figure out. ALl I wanted was a box that showed when the user had email waiting. Kinda of like a PM notice.

So, I had to create a check.php script which I include in ubbthreads.php which uses imap to check for new messages. I also had the auto_login module installed, so lets people save their id and password.

I've attached my check.php which I include. The only change I think you need to make is that "yourley" which is your squirrelmail encryption key used by the auto_login module.

Let me know if you need any help with it - be sure you have IMAP installed. Its much faster - trying to use SM internal stuff was just way too complex.

Just to give you an update on what is going on with this addin:

- Created the class that integrates with all the COM components of MailEnable exposing simple functions for PHP to cope with.
- Altered the whole structure of this modification so that it will be a pure plug-in for .threads. The idea is to make two changes in the templates/default/ubbt_registered.tmpl, editbasic.php and admin/menu.php files to show up the relevant links. The necessary files sit in a new folder under the .threads structure
- Finished the whole administration area where you can create postoffices, domains, mailboxes etc. Outstanding is the config options for admins, whereas they can set group(s), all or none users to automatically get an email upon registration. Also I need to finish the section where the admin will create/enable/disable an account of an existing user
- Catered for POP retrieval. There are a handful of new tables created in the database to cater for that. The POP password is stored in the database using the RC4 package from PEAR (pear.php.net)
- Fully integrated with the login features of threads
- Separated the sent/drafts/deleted/received emails in a folder structure under MailEnable's structure
- Finished the user options concerning POP access, autorefresh, preview panel etc. Still to do -> redirection addresses and checks whether the mailbox exists for the user
- Finished using the threads templates to display the emails in a list
- Need to finish the compose new message and preview pane.

It is quite a bit of a handfull. I had to read loads concerning the mail protocols and fortunately there was a lot of help on the net. The TWE is a file based system so all mails are stored on the server and very little information of that in the database for quicker access.

Attached is a screenshot of the finished list of emails (I removed the email addresses for obvious reasons).

Any input would be more than appreciated