Note the following three very important system requirements to be able to use this feature:

• Unique POP3 mailbox to receive posts for your discussion board
• Net::POP3 perl module installed
• Ability to set up cron job or in some other way regularly and automatically run a process on your server

Here are the installation instructions for setting up Discus e-mail reply with a POP3 mailbox scan:

1. Install Discus 4.0 according to its installation instructions.

2. Set up, or have your web host or ISP set up, a POP3 mailbox that is different from the one where you receive your regular mail. DiscusWare recommends having a separate POP3 mailbox for each Discus board that will handle replies by e-mail.

3. Log into the administration program of your Discus board as the board administrator. Go to Options Manager and click the e-mail tab. Scroll down to the section to configure reply by e-mail through a POP3 Mailbox.

   

   If you do not see this box, then your server does not support the Net::POP3 module, which is the Perl module that allows the Discus scripts to contact your POP3 server and retrieve your e-mail. You, or your web host, will need to install this Perl module before you can proceed further with these instructions. This module is part of the standard libnet module package.

4. Check the "Scan a POP3 mailbox for e-mail replies" box. Enter the server name, username, and password associated with this POP3 e-mail account into the boxes. Also type in the address that is used to reach this POP3 mail account.

   

   Hint: On many servers, the POP3 username will match the portion of the e-mail address before the '@' symbol.

5. Scroll upward on the Options Manager screen to the "E-mail Message Headers" box. Enter in the name that you want to appear as the "From" name in e-mail notification (the name of your discussion board is appropriate). Be sure to enter the e-mail address that corresponds to the POP3 mailbox that receives your posts by e-mail.

   

   The goal in this step is to set up your board so that the "From" and "Reply to" address will cause your members to send their replies directly to the POP3 mailbox that your board will be monitoring for replies. You want replies sent to that mailbox, not to your own mailbox.

6. Scroll upward on the Options Manager screen to the "Activation" box. Check the box next to "Reply by e-mail -- posting features enabled." If not already checked, you must also check the boxes next to "E-mail notification enabled" and "Server is capable of sending e-mail messages."

   

   Note: The e-mail administration feature, a Discus Pro feature, can be enabled at a later time. The checkbox will not show up as an option in freeware Discus.

7. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click the "Configure E-mail Notification" button. This will cause the changes you made in steps 4-6 to be saved, and it will bring up the e-mail notification configuration window.

   

8. You have probably already configured your server for the sending of e-mail notification messages. If not, you will need to do so now (configuring your server to send messages is beyond the scope of this documentation). You must use either from "From" setting or the BLAT "user" setting. We recommend using the "Reply-to" setting as well.

9. In the "Test and Save Settings" box, enter your own e-mail address (not the address you've chosen as the POP3 mailbox for the board) in the box and click the "Test" button.

   

10. Open your e-mail program. You should see that you have received a message from your discussion board (the name and address specified in step 5 should be reflected as the "From" address on this message). The message should indicate that the test of e-mail sending was successful.

    If you did not receive the message, then something is incorrect in your e-mail sending settings. You need to correct these problems and re-test until you have received the test e-mail message from your discussion board.

11. Click the "Save Settings Now" button in the pop-up window when you have received the message properly. On the resulting screen, click the "Close" button to close the pop-up window.

12. Return to your mail program, select the message, and choose to reply to the message. Be sure that you quote the original message in your reply.

    Now, look at the "To" address for your reply. This should be the same address that you entered into the box in step 5 (which is the same address that will result in the message being sent to the POP3 mailbox associated with your discussion board). If this address does not appear as the "To" address, you need to repeat steps 5-11 until it does.

    When you've verified that the "To" address is correct, reply to the message and send the message. You need not type anything in the message itself, but you must be sure that you have quoted the original text.

13. To test the ability of your Discus board to check the POP3 mailbox for messages, you can now run the 'cron-email.cgi' script manually in one of two ways:

    • Log in to your server by telnet/SSH. At the command line, type the following command:

      /discus/script/directory/cron-email.cgi -pop3

      Note: You have to substitute in the actual path to your Discus CGI script directory into the command above. When the command is successful, you will not see any response (no error message, no success message).

    • Run the script through the World Wide Web (version 4.00.b29 and later only). To do this, enter the following URL into your browser's location box:

      http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/discus/cron-email.cgi

      Note: You have to substitute in the actual path to your Discus CGI script directory into the command above. When the command is successful, the result will be a blank screen (if you look at the source, you'll see a comment tag <!--cronhook-->).

    When you have done either of the above, check your e-mail. You should receive another e-mail message from the board that starts with "Your test of reply by e-mail was successful." You now know that your POP3 mailbox is set up properly and that Discus can check that mailbox for messages.

14. The final step is to set up your server so that the POP3 mailbox is scanned automatically and regularly for new messages. We recommend that you do this with a cron job, which is a method on unix systems to schedule tasks. You can use any ONE of the following methods:

    • Recommended method: Setting up a cron job

      • Open up a telnet/SSH connection to your server.

      • Type crontab -e at the command prompt.

      • In the resulting text editor, enter the following line:

        * * * * * /discus/script/directory/cron-email.cgi -pop3

        (Substitute in the actual full path to your script directory, as you did when testing according to step 13.)

      • Save the file and exit. (If your editor was emacs, this is CTRL-x followed by CTRL-c.)

      • Type crontab -l at the command prompt. This will list all of your cron jobs, including the one you just added. (That's a lower-case "L" after the dash.)

    • Asking your web host to set up a cron job

      • Figure out the actual path for your Discus implementation for the cron-email.cgi script noted in the above instructions (substitute your Discus script directory into the command as appropriate).

      • Contact your web host and tell them to set up a cron job that will run that command every minute. (Running it every 5 minutes, etc., is also acceptable, but your mailbox will be checked less frequently for new messages.)

    • Use a SSI to run the cron-email.cgi script from the web

      • Determine one or more pages on your web site that are reasonably active (receiving hits every few minutes). Note that you don't want to put this on a page that receives many hits each minute, since the result of this procedure will be scanning your mailbox for new messages every time the page is hit. Also, this page does not need to be part of the Discus board itself.

      • Add an SSI to the bottom of the page you've identified, as follows:

        <!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/discus/cron-email.cgi"-->

        Note that this is the abbreviated URL to this script on your site with the server name removed. For example:

        http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/discus/cron-email.cgi

      • Request the page where you've added the SSI in your web browser. View the source. You should not see the SSI you entered, but in its place you should see <!--cronhook-->. If you see the SSI itself, then your server didn't parse the page for SSIs.

    • Use PHP to run the cron-email.cgi script from the web

      • Determine one or more pages on your web site that are reasonably active (receiving hits every few minutes). These pages must be parsed with the PHP interpreter. Note that you don't want to put this on a page that receives many hits each minute, since the result of this procedure will be scanning your mailbox for new messages every time the page is hit. Also, this page does not need to be part of the Discus board itself.

      • Add the following command to the bottom of the page you've identified:

        <? readfile("http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/discus/cron-email.cgi") ?>

        (Substitute in the actual URL for your site into this command.)

      • Request the page in your web browser and view the source. You should see <!--cronhook--> in the place of the PHP command you have entered.