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Notice: this post was last updated 6 years 27 weeks ago so it might be outdated. Please be cautious before implementing any of suggestions herein.

Adding content (text and images) to a Drupal site via email

Submitted by Albert on Thu, 06/10/2010 - 15:17

In my experience, there are several users who don't feel comfortable using the standard Drupal interface to create content on their website. I've noticed that this is the case with reforestation.net, I site I manage: even though I provide users with accounts and training, almost all users end up sending me their content (including images and text) via email, and I have to upload it myself to the Drupal site. The main reasons cited for not posting content to Drupal are: it's too complicated, connection too slow (especially in Africa and the Caribbean); and it does not work as expected. So much for end-user empowerment!

The one technology with which all users feel comfortable with is email, so I set about figuring out a way to get users to be able to post content to the site by sending an email (or rather, for now, sending it to me and me forwarding it to a special email account created on the site)

Here's a small (about 15 min.) video showing how to go about this. Be warned, though: at the time of this writing you have to apply two patches to actually make this work. Hopefully, future versions of the modules we use will be updated

Some references:

Troubleshooting:

  • There's an issue which only occurs on certain servers where you'll get a warning: imap_open() [function.imap-open]: Couldn't open stream error. The solution is to put "/novalidate-cert/tls" in the extra commands section of your mailbox.
  • If a user other than user/1 will be using this system, make sure that user has a role with the "convert to imagefield" permission set.
  • In my experience, if you get "warning: imap_header() [function.imap-header]: Bad message number", it is because there is no body in the message. This means you need some text before the first separating line ("-----") for your message to go through.

You will also need cck, imagecache, imagefield, imageapi, filefield

Adding content to a Drupal site via email from Albert Albala on Vimeo.

thanks!

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 07/09/2010 - 16:05.

Excellent. thank you. Here are the terminal commands that I issued:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/mailhandler-6.x-1.8.tar.gz
tar -xvf mailhandler-6.x-1.8.tar.gz
cd mailhandler
wget http://drupal.org/files/issues/mailhandler_pop_deletion.patch
patch -p0 < mailhandler_pop_deletion.patch

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/mailsave-6.x-1.3.tar.gz
tar -xvf mailsave-6.x-1.3.tar.gz
cd mailsave
wget http://drupal.org/files/issues/mailsave-315381-32-work-with-mailhandler-...
patch -p0 < mailsave-315381-32-work-with-mailhandler-6.x-1.8.diff

Thank you. I run several

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 11/12/2011 - 13:42.

Thank you. I run several community sites, this will be very helpful.

Hi I followed the step given

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 07/09/2013 - 17:49.

Hi I followed the step given above but my content is not showing, can you help me?

Hi, the post is 2 1/2 years

Submitted by Albert on Sat, 07/13/2013 - 21:52.

Hi, the post is 2 1/2 years old, and relies on very specific versions of each component. Overall, the procedure is rather fragile and on the site on which I was using it, it also broke down. If anyone finds a way to fix it, please let me know!