On 13 Mar 2006 at 8:20 p m , Dada Mail (Justin Simoni) wrote:

From: "Dada Mail (Justin Simoni)" dada@PROTECTED Subject: Joomla Date: March 13th, 2006 8:20:02 p m

Is anyone using Dada Mail in conjunction with Joomla? If so, how are you putting the two together?

I am developing a web site using Joomla 1 0 8 with Community Builder 1 0 RC2, Docman, Gallery 2 and Dada Mail 2 10 7 with dada_bridge pl to provide a discussion email list I use the same MySQL database for Dada Mail, Joomla and Gallery2 (is this wise?) because our ISP only provides one MySQL database

Joomla with Community Builder controls registrations to the Joomla site with optional validation of email addresses and optional admin approval I am using both options and I only allow registered Joomla users to subscribe to the Dada mail discussion list or view archived messages The simplest way to do this is by putting links to Dada Mail on Joomla pages that are only visible to Joomla logged-in users Users then have to enter their email address again and have it validated again (by Dada Mail), making it a 'quadruple opt-in' list Synchronisation of changed email addresses between Joomla and Dada mail obviously needs to be done manually

To synchronise email addresses between Joomla and Dada mail automatically, I have developed a new plugin for Joomla Community Builder (CB) called plug_subscribedadamail This is based on an existing CB plugin called subscribemailman Subscribedadamail is event driven by CB events such as when a user is approved, updated or deleted It then subscribes or unsubscribes the user's email address to a Dada Mail mailing list If CB is set to validate the user's email address, then Dada Mail doesn't need to do this again

As Dada Mail allows subscriptions without logging in, it is still possible to bypass Joomla and access mail cgi directly Changing the name of the dada directory in cgi-bin and hiding the list makes direct access a bit more difficult but I would like to make it more secure by authenticating access to the Dada Mail subscribe and message archive pages

One approach might be to make Dada Mail read the web server's HTTP $SESSION array, recalculate the Joomla $sessionid then check the Joomla jos_session table for a record that has the correct Joomla $session_id This approach would be easier if there is a common MySQL database for a Dada Mail and Joomla

Another approach could be to close the Dada Mail list and only allow subscriptions via the list administration control panel, so that the CB subscribedadamail plugin could log in to the Dada list admin, add a new email address then log out

A third approach might be to make mail cgi require some sort of pin code or password when subscribing a new address Is there any way of doing this? I would also like to apply similar protection to viewing the list archives but not to unsubscribing as this would break the unsubscribe links in the list emails

Any comments or suggestions would be welcome

Dave Lauder