email

stud has a new email messaging system installed. This took me two days to make as the integration of mIRC sockets and my webhost’s email capabilities makes it less than a marriage made in heaven. However perseverance was the key and I finally got it working thanks to ripping some code from the wonderful people at http://formtoemail.com who provided me with the php code I could just ftp and call from mIRC via sockets. Letting the PHP(mail) plugin do the hard work. My hosting provider (godaddy.com) seem to have some sort of block on connecting directly to their smtp relays. I did raise a support ticket but they only provided me with another smtp relay, unfortunately I could only access that from within the site(i.e from on their machines) if I could do that, I wouldn’t need a host!!

Anyhow, the PHP script sends the email directly from within the site. Email addresses are completely hidden from prying eyes. This also has the additional effect of bypassing my daily limit on relays as, well, I’m not relaying, I’m doing it direct.

It works as follows.

You type !email nick message for example,
<billythekid> !email billy where the hell are you?
<stud> billythekid: Mail sent to billy!

It then sends the email to “billy”’s stored email addy within the bot so no channel scrapers can grab the mail addy either. The email I received looked like…

Of course this means that not everyone can receive mail via IRC. Only those who have been manually added to stud’s list. So no one need worry about suddenly receiving loads of crap emails from folk. Also only those manually added to a list of senders have the permissions to use it anyhow. At the moment that’s only me but it will be open to anyone.

Now, this probably needs a policy statement too. So…

I do not take any responsibility for the content of emails sent via this system other than ones sent by myself. Any user found to be abusing the system will have their privileges and or email addresses removed at the discretion of myself.

I will NOT sell/forward or otherwise use the email addresses submitted for inclusion for any reason. I will simply copy the address and paste it into stud’s list. Email addresses will never be public and are never shown to the person doing the emailing. All emails will come from stud@the-kid.org and stud@the-kid.org will not be used for any other(non-IRC) emails. People may use more than one nickname for the same email address (!email billy, !email billythekid, !email btk will all reach me at my email address). I will not add any email address without request. I will not seek authorisation to add any email address. It’s entirely voluntary.

This system will be open to everyone in the game on request regardless of corporation etc, as are all stud scripts.

[/policy statement]

Now I hope to expand this in future to perhaps send people information from other parts of stud (links lists for example) but at the moment it’s just a quick IRC-to-email script for messaging people who may not be online or for whatever reason you like. One thing to note is that anyone in the channel you are using it on will see the message too and I have no plans to make this a hidden/closed system at the moment. I won’t for example make it possible to private message stud with the !email command to hide your messages from others. Stud does have his own channel at #stud if you want some limited privacy(i.e if nobody else is there!) I’m all about transparency!

btk