The discussion revolves around adding a mailto link to the email notification footer in Discourse to allow users to reply directly to the original poster via email. kwest seeks a way to include a direct email link in the footer, similar to a previous forum setup, for a closed community that prefers private email conversations. pfaffman explains that email addresses are typically private but suggests a custom plugin is needed to expose the user email in the serializer. He shares two relevant plugins—discourse-display-email and discourse-email-include-address—to help achieve this. kwest expresses gratitude and plans to test the solutions, with potential for further customization if needed.
Is there any way to do that in user_notifications.reply_by_email, or any other part of Discourse?
(Note: We have reply by email set up for replying publicly to the whole community, and that’s working great! This question is about specifically replying directly to the author of a post or comment, without it going to the whole community.)
In modern times email addresses are considered private, but I guess you’ve got a closed community where everyone thinks their are is public information.
You’ll need a custom plugin that adds the user email to the serializer so then you can add it to the message. I once wrote one, but can’t remember where it might be.
Yeah, putting the email in the footer is pretty weird, but as you guessed, this is a completely closed community and a lot of them really like taking private conversations to individual email.
I’ve searched the plugin directory as thoroughly as I could to try to find that plugin you wrote once upon a time, but came up empty. If you happen to locate it, my community would be thrilled. (I wish I could try writing a version myself, but Ruby isn’t one of my languages.)
These do something like what you want. If you have a budget I’ll be happy to make them so what you want. They should have examples of how to add the email address to the serializer.