SMS Enabled Elgg

I am looking into sms-enabling Elgg sites..

This will address

  • SMS messaging out from Elgg
  • Elgg message receiving ( involves setting up an SMS server -- more code work)

Marcus Povey has already described Elgg's ability to do this.. but I do not intend to "compete" with CurveRider's services.

When I am finished the SMS PlugIn will be available for free to non-profit Elgg-sites.

  • Well for my part, I expect the possibility to write sms to any other user over the site. Maybe the plugin can work together with the messages plugin - so you can choose if you want to write a message or sms...

    What I don't understand right now - will this cause further costs for the users who send out the sms or for me to use the sms server?

    What tech details do you need, Dhrup? Writing "I am very interested in this" I mean, I will use your plugin and if the community users will accept and use it, I will stay with it.
    Surely, I will support your work and time together with other by donating.

    Unfortunately, I have never been involved in this content before and have no experience with coding - so I cannot help you with the code.

    Gleb

  • @Gleb

    When I wrote " ask that everyone sends that PlugIn Author $1 each.. " ;-) I meant for all the other PlugIn authors, because there has been discussion on other posts about donations. Some PlugIn authors ask for donatons, some don't. Some people like to send donations, some don't. Some people wants eveything for free because this is open source, GPL, etc. Some people ( like me ) earn their living thru writing code for Elgg sites.

    I have written only 1 PlugIn so far ( MySpace.. which seems to not work any more - I believe that is because the MySpace people may have blocked the open access via which the code was fetching MySpace data ).

    I have since then got too too busy with work to really do much work on areas such as Elgg-SMS and many other projects which have my interest.

    Some of the requirements details I like to see is along the lines of what SkotMiller has written above. And also what you just wrote.

    Once I get a better idea of what people want to do with SMS I will try to find the time to develop my existing SMS code into something for Elgg. I *might put up a donate button...  I might not. Depends on my mood ;-) I don't really need the money.. but it is nice when I see people send $1, $5, etc to another PlugIn author for their hard work..;-O

    Well hope.. I have not bored you with writing too much ;-)

  • @ Gleb, if user1 sets up sms, twitter, etc... all user2 would have to do, is leave a message on the messageboard. the site would then use the user1 settings to determine what to do with the message. if they have sms setup the message is sent there. if they have twitter setup it goes there. or both. The messageboard should be kept to 140 like twitter and the wire.

    The wire would be a whole site messageboard essentially. if user1 replies via twitter or a SMS it would be displayed. users can opt in to have their messages displayed there along with whatever other setting they have, sms or twitter, ect...

    The messageboard on the profile would be their conversations only, weeding out other users posts.

    I may not know exactly what I'm talking about, but bringing together all the short messages into one place would make finding things easier. Discussions can be handled by the message system, group discussions of another forum integration.

  • the messageboard can have an optional display to show how the user has set how to recieve messages; SMS and/or Twitter, or Site only. This way if you want to send someone an SMS/tweet, you'll know if they have it setup. otherwise you'll know they check it on the site.

     

    @Dhrup the donate button is a good idea. I've used a couple already. Help you, help me.

  • @Dhrup

    My input to this discussion is the following:

    Althouhg i understand the purspose of your project trying to handle incoming and outgoing messages thorugh SMS and elgg, and trying to handle a coversation between both which i think is a grat idea and the ultimate goal, another variant in using SMS could be the following:

    Receiving notifications via SMS of the messages recieved at the elgg system.

    Pushing the incoming message from their notifications compartment to their cellphone via the SMS.

    Sending at most the 70 characters accepted by the phone follwed with "..."(option).

    This could perhaps also be used with the plugin "groupemailer" which already sends updates to an email, but make it send the same message(reduced message if too long)  to the #@phonecarrier.com, that the user will provide through a selector tool in the plugin.

     

  • I must be going blind !!! I missed this one ;-(

    The SMS massage length according to the specs I believe is 160 chars, though cell phone companies impose their own size limit. ( I hope I find the spare time to get arund to completing this SMS project ). So I suppose the SMS-enabling can include a field for cdeel providers that defines that provider's max message size . So the "xxxxxxxx" + "..." will work ok.

     

  • And now the real reason I came back here:

    I think I just figured out how to have an elgg site receive quasi-SMS and be able to store as for example a "wire post"

    (1)    Elgg Site sends out an "email" to you at "123 123 4567 @vtext.com" from "elgg@MySite.Com"

    (2)    You get Email SMS

    (3)    You tweet back ( should I be saying "yelgg back "? ) a reply to that SMS

    (4)    MySite.Com gets the EMail

    (5)    MySite.Com has an *EMail Filter* which directs that Email to a *Program* ( just discovered this feature on my own server LOL ;;-)

    (6)    *Program parses the EMail contents

    (7)    *Program then uses appropriate Elgg functions to simply send the message to Elgg Site's wire ( this part is *dead easy ;-)

  • Or you can do what I do.

    When you tweet back I add a #-group-tag at the beginning of the tweet and the On the World plugin is set to detect any messages with that #-group-tag in them and display them. Just a case of getting your subscribers to edit their tracking list to include whatever the #-group-tag name is. I haven't yet figured out how the admin can embed one in the plugin yet.

     

  • ummm Jed... yr mssg is a little too 'brief'.

    I understand abt 55% --- but not 100% of what u r saying b/c u r talking like in php code LOL ;-)

    plz elaborate

    PS: you never came back on that "Extracting from wikepedia" whatchamacallit ;-(

  • okay quick demo - go to your twitter page (well anyone reading can do this as well) and in the search box enter #hellodhrup you should find a message...