I just recently setup blog-by-mail and had to get in and hack at getmail.php to make it work. Plus I couldn't find the docs so I searhced these forums. I'm just using mine in the simplest form. i.e. sending an email to generate a blog post. One hack I had to do was to allow for a ':' in the password. It's all working great now and I have an email template that contains all the numeric category IDs so I can get the posts into the right category. I place the IDs in the template after the string that signals the end of the post.

What you're suggesting is ambitious. You're post is the beginnings for a set of requirements. The further you refine those requirements the easier it would be if someone was going to tackle that.

PadreSol wrote:

It's all working great now and I have an email template that contains all the numeric category IDs so I can get the posts into the right category. I place the IDs in the template after the string that signals the end of the post.

Hmm, specifying categories and tags is another issue that should probably be addressed in e-mail blogging. A lot of other services have solved this by having "name:value" kinds of fields at the beginning of the e-mail. It sounds like you put the category at the end though. Setting the category by id sounds like it would be a pain though unless you have some sort of template like you described. I wonder if "cat:cat_name" would be acceptable.

PadreSol wrote:

What you're suggesting is ambitious. You're post is the beginnings for a set of requirements. The further you refine those requirements the easier it would be if someone was going to tackle that.

I had been toying with the idea and was thinking that I might do it myself. I was just kind of bouncing ideas off the forum. In the open source world, if you want something done, you have to be prepared to do it yourself ;)

cat ID can be set in Dashboard to determine in what Cat (and Blog!) a mail ends up by default. If memory serves me well you can override the cat ID in the mail.
It should be easy to add some parameters. See the getmail.php file for that.

Good luck

IanLewis wrote:

Hmm, specifying categories and tags is another issue that should probably be addressed in e-mail blogging. A lot of other services have solved this by having "name:value" kinds of fields at the beginning of the e-mail. It sounds like you put the category at the end though. Setting the category by id sounds like it would be a pain though unless you have some sort of template like you described. I wonder if "cat:cat_name" would be acceptable.

I have a template email that I use like below. The category ids are included at the bottom since I can't remember them. They are ignored getmail.php

Here's the format of the template mail:

login:pwd

<title>this is an interesting title</title>
<category>14</category>

This is an interesting blog post about blog posting by mail.

ThisIsTheStringThatSignalsTheEndOfTheBlogPostTogetmail.phpEverythingBelowIsIgnored

ID cat name
14 Uncategorized
13 misc
12 sports
11 cactus
10 astronomy

IanLewis wrote:

I had been toying with the idea and was thinking that I might do it myself. I was just kind of bouncing ideas off the forum. In the open source world, if you want something done, you have to be prepared to do it yourself ;)

I think getmail.php needs refactoring. It would be easier to maintain and add upon.

(Disclaimer: Right now the cron job to run getmail.php fails and I encounter a fatal error, http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=16367 )

I still can't configure my email psoting ?
please help

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