[pmwiki-users] Fox mail features: feedback invited

Hans design5 at softflow.co.uk
Sun May 18 11:02:18 CDT 2008


I would love to get some feedback on new developments for Fox
and FoxNotify regards ability to send out emails to lists of
recipients.

Up till now after installing FoxNotify one could add to a Fox form
a foxfilter 'FoxNotify', which made the form, after successful
posting, send out an email to one or several lists of recipients on
notify list pages in a special 'FoxNotifyLists' group (the group could be
customised). A input control named 'foxnotify' could specify which list page
to use, but it had to be in the FoxNotifyLists group.

Now I added a foxaction 'mail' and markup (:foxmail ..:) which
similar to fox markup (:foxreplace ...:) (:foxadd ...:) (:foxptv ...:)
can take a template and target parameter. The template in this case
is used to format the email, and the target is used to specify a
notify list page.

This new markup makes it possible to use Fox for mailing an email to
a specified group of recipients, and it is not necessary that Fox has
to do a successful posting for this email to be sent. Thereby one can
built Mail Forms (Contact Forms) or use it to issue newsletters to
a group of subscribers (as long as there are not too many, since the
mailing is done by the php mail function).

Today I widened the possibilities by making it possible to issue HTML
formatted emails. The email template accepts wiki markup, the
body of the email will be marked up to HTML, and the email header
will get appropriate code to mark the email message as HTML formatted.
A variable has to be set in config.php to enable this behaviour.

I also integrated FoxNotify and Fox code further, so that it is no
longer necessary to set a foxfilter FoxNotify. It is sufficient to
set a notify list page with a foxnotify input control.

These changes of today have not yet been released.

I am wondering if it is a good idea to keep a FoxNotifyLists group,
and if the  (:foxmail ..:) markup should be restricted to use only
email target lists from that group, or if target lists could be
anywhere (like other target pages). 'mail' has to be enabled as
foxaction for such pages (like 'add' or 'replace' for other target
pages, as specified with $FoxPagePermissions.

My original idea about the FoxNotifyLists group was that it is easier
to protect pages with email addresses if they are in one specific
group. Also FoxNotify worked without any extra FoxPagePermission setting.

Have you got any comments on such security questions?

And are there specific security concerns to be addressed by allowing
HTML formatted email messages? Note the formatting is done via wiki
markup in the template page, not by inserting HTML tags into the
template. At the same time it will be possible to use wiki markup for
instance in a text box of a Mail Form, if HTML emails are enabled.
Quite good looking formatted newsletters, including images and links
etc., can be mailed this way as well.

Please give me you ideas on these issues, so I can finalise the next
release of fox and FoxNotify.

Thank you!
  ~Hans




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