Post Office - Moblogging for Movable Type
Post Office is a plugin for Movable Type that allows users to post to their blog via email. It works by connecting Movable Type to an existing email account, like GMail or any POP or IMAP compliant mailbox, and periodically scanning for messages to post. Each user can be given a unique email address to which to post to uniquely identify them and the blog they want to post to when sending an email.
Setup
Before you begin be sure you have the following prerequisites and software installed:
- Mail::IMAPClient (for IMAP)
- Mail::POP3Client (for POP)
- Email::Address
- Email::MIME
- IO::Socket::SSL
Then install the plugin per its README.txt file. Finally configure the plugin via Post Office's plugin settings screen. When the plugin is configured, and if the current user has setup an API Password, then a link will be surfaced at the bottom of the Write Entry screen. The link contains the email address to which you should send your messages.
rm_blogger
June 20, 2008 4:36 PM | Reply
I have it installed and once I got the proper perl modules installed it quit throwing errors but it's not doing anything and the email link that shows under the create entry screen is incorrect.
Any way to troubleshoot this?
Arindam Ganguly
July 22, 2008 1:09 PM | Reply
is the email the one you setup for this purpose? is it pop3 compliant? gmail provides this.
if it is..the email in the entry page should be the same with a +number
in it. the number is the id of your blog. so the plugin knows where to post to
Cindi Knox
August 30, 2008 6:13 PM | Reply
If I set up a mailbox called mailboxname, and the email in the entry page is mailboxname+1, the mailserver is going to reject mail to mailboxname+1@example.com.
Cindi Knox
replied to comment from Cindi Knox
August 30, 2008 8:26 PM | Reply
Add requirement:
Your e-mail server MUST ignore the +n added to the local-part.
To verify, set up an email address (test@example.com). Send an e-mail (test+1@example.com). If the e-mail is successfully received (at test@example.com), your e-mail server is capable of working with this plugin.
Gautam Patel
September 3, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply
A few things to note:
1. The plus-style email addressing is only required if you have multiple blogs running off a single installation
2. Not all service providers accept plus-style email addressing. Gmail does. Use gmail.
3. When configuring PO, for "host" enter pop.gmail.com, and tick ON SSL required.
thegreenpages
September 20, 2008 7:18 PM | Reply
Thanks for the tip Gautam Patel!
Minh Nguyá»…n
March 10, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply
There’s plenty of unofficial documentation at the Movable Type Wiki.
Rob G
April 1, 2009 10:13 PM | Reply
I've installed PostOffice and the additional software but can't get the Settings option on the Plugin configuration page, only Info.
Help please!
spierce
August 14, 2009 6:56 AM | Reply
We have installed the PostOffice plugin and have our default post status set to draft but it still automatically posts. Can anyone help?
Tom
August 27, 2009 1:13 PM | Reply
Has anyone made this go with the Enterprise version? I'm trying everything using a pop3 Gmail account, but no posts ever show up. I've tried using the "+" syntax, not using it, setting the permission on the top-level plugin screen and the blog-level plugin screen.
The docs say it runs a process "periodically." What's the period? Can it be modified? And what is the process? I don't see it anywhere in the crontabs.
I've got to say, too, that as usual the documentation is sketchy, confusing and incomplete. For example, there's nothing called an "API Key" in my enterprise version. I have a blog ID number and a Web Services Password, nothing else. Can't we at least have some consistent nomenclature to work against?
anina .net
September 8, 2009 2:32 AM | Reply
is there anyone who has gotten this plugin to work on 4.21?
are there any other mobile blogging with photo possibilities out there? i wished that this plugin would work but i cannot find anyone who has been able with it's documentation (very sketchy) to make it work.
any other free options out there?
hanschuh123
October 30, 2009 1:40 AM | Reply
Hello,
if I have correctly understood the documentation of the postOffice plug
then it doesnt supported to filter tags out of a email.
but how to solve this problem now, is maybe a ready solution existing or not? certainly i cant find anything.
can someone give me please a little bit information?
thanx!
Alex Teslik
October 17, 2010 11:29 PM | Reply
Man, the move to github has been a complete trainwreck for the people who actually want to use these plugins. Is it anyone's job to make sure the links on these plugin pages (1) actually work and (2) go to the latest version of these plugins? The download link goes to PostOffice version 1.0, but version 1.1 has been on github since March! :(
The really sad news is that I only realized that after I downloaded 1.0 here and hacked on it for two days. I was going to make a patch, but now I don't have time to port in the 1.1 stuff and make a patch, so forget it. You can download what I did here and patch it yourself:
http://acatysmoof.com/posting/problems/mtos/PostOffice.zip
The only file I changed from 1.0 is the PostOffice.pm module. Here is what I added/fixed:
- detect html or text email format and set the line breaks for the entry automatically. This makes text emails appear correctly, and html emails appear correctly without having to change any blog settings.
- process message parts in a single loop (instead of two loops as in 1.1) while still replacing cid and loc links with the correct asset. The structure allows for future modifications, such as the automatic embedding of youtube videos, quicktime movies, audio files, etc.
- auto-rotate email images based on EXIF tags. This allows iphone users to mail images to their blog and have them appear correctly. The EXIF tag is updated after rotation so that Mobile Safari and some other browsers do not rotate the image again based on the Orientation tag.
- deposit asset files in dated folders like 2010/10/17/asset.jpg instead of placing them all at the site root level of the blog and making one hell of a mess.
Tested with iPhone 4, GMail, and OpenWebMail. HTML and text formats. MTOS 4.23.
Alex Teslik
October 17, 2010 11:30 PM | Reply
A link to github anywhere on this page would be helpful as well.
Alex Teslik
October 17, 2010 11:41 PM | Reply
I should also mention that the parts processing in my version is recursive to any depth, like an email message. This ensures more accurate re-creation of the email as a post entry.
vincent
March 4, 2011 4:16 AM | Reply
Does this plugin work with MT 5.04?
Why not add an option to check the mail box manually so that we can make sure whether it works or not?