Answer via Email

Question

Hi,

Wordpress has a plugin that allows to post via email. Why can't we have a similar plugin as it makes more sense to a Q2A system. I'm thinking of making one - will be free. Anyone interested or wants to have some features here? Or does anyone know a problem for this feature?

Comments

It would be a nice feature, even I have seen the same feature in Github. There also we can reply to any comment through email and an email icon appears to the side of that comment, showing that the comment is done via email.

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Actually it would be pretty straight forward to do this if we have access to an email account. May be I shall try it assuming 'localhost' mailserver and access to mail account.

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I've done this for one of my clients and it's not completely straightforward. First you have to read the email account (and in a Q2A plugin support multiple types of email), check recent emails, check each one is not already in the system. Then you have to extract the message from the email, removing the original email if it's a reply. And then figure out which post it's replying to.

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@Scott Do you mean accessing via IMAP/POP3? I meant if we have direct access to mail server this could be done easily - but can't be a plugin then.

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Yes I meant access via imap. (Also I forgot to add another issue - you need to install the PHP imap extension to use imap.)

What do you mean by "direct access"?

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Thanks :) That would be the proper way. I was just thinking to call a script on a mail arrival which can be done by using a .forward file I guess. Then the script doing the post insertion.

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This would be sweet.  One thing I would want to see is that the post should show that it was posted via email.  Id want to know my users are using this (free! - sweet) feature.  

A separate point mechanism would need to be added (probably more points for an email answer) vs browser answer, for example.  One for posting/asking a question and one for answering, if this is the intended functionality.