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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":
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:
As there is no way to enforce subject lines, you might want to lower minimum topic length, too
And as some emails may have the same subject, allow duplicate titles might be another option you want to look at
Suggested User Preferences
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