discourse/docs/MAILING-LIST-SETUP.md

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App Setup

Acting like a Mailing list is disabled per default in Discourse. This guide shows you through the way to enable and configure it.

Admin UI Setup

First of, you need a POP3s enabled server receiving your email. Then make sure to enable "reply_by_email_enabled" and configured the server appropriately in your Admin-Settings under "Email": enable-reply-by-email

Once that is in place, you can enable the "email_in"-feature globally in the same email-section.

Per category email address

Once "email_in" is enabled globally a new configuration option appears in your category settings dialog allowing you to specify an email-address for that category. Emails going to the previously configured inbox to that email-address will be posted in this category.

For spam protection only users of a high trust level can post via email per default. You can change this via the "email_in_min_trust" setting. Additionally, by checking the "accept non-user emails"-checkbox in the category settings, emails to the given email but from unknown email-addresses will be posted in the category by the System-User in a quoted fashion, showing the original email-address and content in the quotes.

Troubleshooting

You might want to allow users to opt-in to receive all posts via email with the option on the bottom: enable-mailing-list-mode

As there is no way to enforce subject lines, you might want to lower minimum topic length, too lower-min-topic-length

And as some emails may have the same subject, allow duplicate titles might be another option you want to look at allow-duplicate-titles

Suggested User Preferences

suggested-user-prefs

FAQ

Q: Why is this needed?

A: No matter how good a forum is, sometimes members need to ask a question and all they have is their mail client.

Q: What if a message is received from an email address which doesn't belong to an approved, registered user?

A: It will be rejected, and a notification email sent to the moderator. Check your POP mailbox to see the rejected email content.

Q: Who did this?

A: @therealx, @yesthatallen and @ligthyear