Discourse and incoming email

[jenny_molloy]

Hi

I need incoming email to function on Discourse and it seems like there are two options:

• set up a POP3 inbox, which I can't do on Cloudron
• add this module for direct delivery of email, which I also can't do on Cloudron

At the moment I will have setup an external POP3 service and hope for the best. Would you consider including the direct email delivery module in future Discourse setups?

Any tips in the meantime from people who have got this to work?
Many thanks!

Jenny

[jimcavoli]

From a cursory glance, it looks like the latter may be possible, though with some custom records and the like, it would be a somewhat more involved setup. Frankly, the most appropriate way to do that would be for box to have a DNS add-on that could handle things like this...also would help automate install on certain things requiring SRV or TXT records and the like. After that, there's the problem of handling the transport on port 25 which would require another round of changes to the shared mail server (haraka) to answer correctly and pass those emails off to the app...also not impossible, but another thing to do. Turns into a bit of a feat, but it is possible. I see no reason it couldn't be pulled off in a generally-useful way, but it would definitely be a serious set of work and not be done super fast. The ROI for other use cases than just discourse is likely to be a major consideration along the way. The mail server changes are more the issue than the DNS ones, imo. Worth thinking about though.

[girish]

I cannot think of a good solution immediately. But why exactly does discourse require POP3 over IMAP? Seems so strange, even really old things support IMAP these days, just very surprised.

[jdaviescoates]

@girish said in Discourse and incoming email:

I cannot think of a good solution immediately. But why exactly does discourse require POP3 over IMAP? Seems so strange, even really old things support IMAP these days, just very surprised.

Good question. And yes, it does seem odd, doesn't it!

[jimcavoli]

@girish There is pending IMAP support in https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/8301 which has been going through some back-and forth for review since November, but it's looking pretty positive as far as actual merge/release possibility in the next few months. If that happens, it's definitely the easiest option on the board.

[jenny_molloy]

Thanks for the advice! I managed to get inbound mail coming in now by setting up a subdomain and external POP mail box, which fixes an immediate problem regarding how we were planning to use the forum with specific category emails.

The main outstanding issue now with allowing incoming replies is that Cloudron outbound SMTP won't accept a "reply to" address that is a subdomain with plus addresses/VERPs (I guess both of these are separate issues).

I am trying Amazon SES as the SMTP server for the whole domain and will see if that solves the issue and report back.

Jenny

[girish]

@jenny_molloy For subdomain emails, simply add the subdomain itself as a domain in Cloudron. Then the mail server will started allowing that subdomain for outbound. You can even setup SES relay in mail -> domain -> SES.

[jenny_molloy]

Great - adding the subdomain in Cloudron and setting up Amazon SES login for that fixed the issue so I can now both send (via SES) and receive emails (via a Zoho pop mail box), including reply by email mode.
Thanks for your advice everyone!