CUNY Academic Commons

This is an interesting idea.

The problem is detecting what a BP email is and what is not because I would have to do this on a case-by-case basis. Same for plugins. Shouldn't be too hard for BP core, but plugins are another matter. The easiest thing would be to hijack the 'From' address for all WP mail, but I can see how this would not be desirable.

I'll have to double-check BP Docs comments support. Replying to comments should work; I know there have been a few iterations in BP Docs since the last time I added support for it. Perhaps something broke along the way? I'll need to do some testing.

Thanks, Ray.

The easiest thing would be to hijack the 'From' address for all WP mail, but I can see how this would not be desirable.

How about if ( bp_is_root_blog() ) ?

For the Commons this would totally be fine. If you don't think it's going to be an inordinate amount of work, let's do it for CAC (at least as a plugin).

The larger question then becomes whether it would be desirable as part of the plugin, as the default for RBE installs. IMO, it would be good for nearly all installations. And for those that don't want it, you could just provide a filter that allows WP's native From address to be applied for a given kind of email.

Hi Ray: can you provide your decision/feedback on this issue? We are likely to bump it from 1.5 but want to get a sense of scope. Thanks!

Thanks for the ping, Micki.

After revisiting this issue and re-reading the whole thread, there are two options:

1) For any email that is not RBE-related (this includes BP and WP), modify the email body to add a line like:

--- Replying to this email will not send a message directly to the recipient or group ---

This could be added to the beginning or end of the email body. The positive is this tells users exactly what will happen if they choose to reply. The negatives are people might still not abide by this line and continue emailing back and this line could be intrusive in minor emails like site registration and activation.

The wording of this line could be better, but let me know what you think. This is also the easiest implementation.

2) For any email that is not RBE-related, modify the "Reply-To" address to use RBE's. RBE will then send a bounce-back email to the sender.

The positive is the main commons@gc.cuny.edu will not receive any email. A few negatives I can think of are instances where we shouldn't hijack the email address (contact form plugins?). If someone replies to a non-RBE email that happens to be important, CAC will never receive it.

I think option (1) is the preferred option, but would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks, Ray. Why don't we try option #1 and see whether that helps cut down on these messages? I think your sample text is fine.

Thanks, Ray.