Posting by Email

[neumannu47]

Is it possible to post a new article by sending an email, as it is with blogger.com?

[garvinhicking]

See the popfetcher plugin: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/p ... opfetcher/

Or if you have more server access (SSH) you could use http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/p ... /mail2s9y/

However to set that up for serendipity is a bit more difficult than on a service like blogger.com where they offer you a full server integration. You can compare running Serendipity as if you were running your own blogger.com hosting service; they take care of those Emailing entries the same way you have to setup mail2s9y or popfetcher.

Regards,
Garvin

[garvinhicking]

Here's a more general description of how the popfetcher plugin works:

If you don't have SSH access (which is usual if you don't have your own root server) then you'll need to use the popfetcher plugin.

It works like that:

1. You get yourself an email account which has the sole reason to get Serendipity-Posting mails. Either you can create a mail adress on your hosting server, or you get yourself a free service like hotmail.com or gmail

2. Now you enter the credentials to that Email account in the popfetcher configuration. It is all simple like any other serendipity configuration option and ask you to fill in the mailserver host (like mail.gmail.com) and the username and password

3. Now you can write a mail to lets say neumannu47-s9y@gmail.com. The content of your mail will be used as the Blog entry.

4. Now comes the hard part which is somewhat wacky: You need to login to Serendipity and click on the "Fetch Mails" links which the popfetcher plugin has created. Now the plugin will connect to the mail account, fetch all written mails to that account and insert them as Serendipity entries.

If you have a crontab facility, you can automate that task 4.) so that you don't have to poll the mails manually. You can use that crontab on your own linux home machine, or your own windows machine or even your webhoster. The only important thing is that some task needs to automatically fetch a special URL (http://blog/index.php?/plugin/popfetcher_poll) to kick off the process. Even I could create such an automatted task to poll your mails, but I can't offer that my host will always be up to perform the service. So if you have some friend who's always online, or have access to a crontab facility, or your own PC is always online you can use that way. If not, you will sadly have to manually kick off the process time and again.

Hope that sounds clear to you?

Regards,
Garvin

[nyquil]

One thing I've not been able to determine.

When using popfetcher, do the normal event plugins that get called from serendipity_admin.php (like trackback pinging, xml-rpc stuff) run? When I tried it, the test posts never got forwarded on to livejournal via the ljupdate plugin, but then again like 1 out of every 4 things I post dont end up on livejournal, so thats not really the best test.

Basically, does popfetcher call plugins during posting?

[neumannu47]

In the cron job, how does wget know to grab the email from the POP account?

[garvinhicking]

nyquil: I can't answer your question. Basically the same Plugin Events should be executed, but it's up to the certain plugins to see if they properly implement it. A good example is the LJ Update plugin: Basically it should support to be executed when posting via E-Mail. But it was not rightly coded, so I fixed that today. Other plugins may behave the same way. Trackbacks should be announced, about pingbacks I'm not sure. I think they depend on form POST variables, which are not existant when popfetcher posts an entry.

Neumannu47: Wget does not need to know. The email configuration is saved within the popfetcher plugin, and it can access that on its own. WGet is only there to call the popfetcher plugin.

Regards,
Garvin

[jason]

In the cron job, how does wget know to grab the email from the POP account?

wget will run a url, e.g.

wget http://www.yourdomain.com/serendipity/p ... popfetcher

That URL will actually run the POPfetcher plugin code, picking up your POPfetcher settings, fetching, and processing your email.
It's a very elegant way to externally run plugins!

J

[Elaine]

I love this feature!!!
Thanks to all who created and improved it!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Great to hear that! Have fun!

Best regards,
Garvin

[kylewelsh]

I stumbled across BlogMailr today - it works with no plugins required.