Thanks TTG
Here's my update
1. I found a minor bug in the HTML printout that causes Thread block 4 to be labeled the same as thread block 3. You might want to edit it
replace
with the following:
It's somewhere around line 850 - I have added so much I can't be specific, but about midway down in the block that starts "if ($numtopics4)"

2. I have added the user-selected articles header back in. The text version is working well but for the HTML version to be usable I would need to have a way of ensuring that truncating the message doesn't split HTML tags or tag pairs, or it could mess up the rest of the message.

update - I got around this by using a tag like -MORE- right in the post. Then I made the commbull trim the article right at the tag, and there is no danger of cutting in a bad place!

3. I got rid of 222 lines of code in commbull.php by removing the redundant iterations of the same code for thread blocks 2, 3, 4 as were used in block 1.

4. I found a problem when I designated some 24 forum members in a special public group called proofreaders. When I tried to send the newsletter to them for proofing commbull complained that there were no users. I had to fix two queries to enable it to recognize the auxilliary user groups.

All in all, with the exception of not having any calendar or birthday events working, it came off pretty well. I sent out 2800 newsletters this afternoon.

Matt

I did a 'commbull' search in my phrase manager and NOTHING came up. now am I to add this phrase? A little more info would help this rookie, as I don't see it in my ACP as it shows in the first post attachment.

EDIT
I did a search with "Phrase Variable Name Only" on 'commbull' and it showed:
Control Panel Global Phrases Containing 'commbull'
commbull - Standard Phrase - Send Community Bulletin this is correct?

But still isn't showing up.



Other then this so far, install went smooth
Thanks
Coll

I don't have commbull shown as a phrase. Even did a manual search for it but no luck!

Can someone with php MyAdmin please enter the following command:

SELECT * FROM 'phrase' WHERE varname = 'commbull'

And let me know what is displayed please?

Thanks.

I do get the some error in a fresh vb3.0.3 install.

Did anyone has a hint?

joergh

Upps, problem solved? Seems to have something to do with the phrases. After a reload it is okay and says:

Format of the Newsletters

[] HTML if checked. Plain Text if unchecked.

thx!

joergh

I had the same thing happen, as I documented above

If you want to change any of the phrases, I think you go right into the language attachment file and change them there.

Regards,

Matt

BTW I've uploaded the files but haven't sent a new bulletin as yet, is that why I don't have commbull shown as a phrase?

I don't have the option to send it from the admincp either. As well as that users don't have the option to subscribe/unsubscribe from their control panel. Will these appear after a Community Bulletin has been sent?

No, but have you made the template and script modifications shown when you click on the link that says Installation instructions?

Just hard code it if you still have problems ;)

How can I automate the production of the community bulletin to run say every Monday morning at 06:00 hrs?

:speechless:

I can't imagine what I did wrong but my newsletters aren't being sent out in HTML.. I sent it to myself and when I opened it in Outlook, it's all text.. Any ideas?

Great mod!!

Hi Sal,

What is your USERCP setting for newsletter type? checked or unchecked?

And while I have you on the line...

Are you getting any events or birthdays showing in the output? This same question has been asked by myself and others, but no one seems to know or care...

Regards,

Matt

Yeah, I do have the option checked in my control panel. HTML and all.. That's what's got me confused. I can't figure out why I'd get the email in text only...

Otherwise.. All I get is the header for events.. Nothing beneath it in regards.. So I have the same problem too..

I am getting this error...

Database error in vBulletin 3.0.3:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb3_user SET
styleid = 3,
showvbcode = 2,
pmpopup = 0,
maxposts = -1,
daysprune = 0,
timezoneoffset = '-6',
startofweek = 1,
languageid = 0,
threadedmode = 0,
autosubscribe = -1,
usereplacementscensor = ,
options = 3799
WHERE userid = 11

mysql error: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '
options = 3799
WHERE userid = 11' at line 12

mysql error number: 1064

Date: Friday 15th of October 2004 12:31:37 PM
Script: http://sports-boards.net/forums/profile.php
Referer: http://sports-boards.net/forums/prof...do=editoptions

==================================

Any suggestions?

It's only sending to 400 out of my 1100 users.

Any ideas on why or how to fix?

There is a missing quote preceeding the number 11, should read :

WHERE userid = '11'

hope it helps

That does seem like a mystery. How does the HTML preview look? When it mails stuff out, if memory serves, I think it tells the type of newsletter it's sending HTML or text . Maybe that was the previous version, though. Do you have anything like that?

Regards,

Matt

*theArchitect Clicks Install*.

A sensational hack. Your work is most appreciated.

Yeah, it does say "html" when mailing out.. But even more strange, I guess, is - I don't see any html in the preview. The way I see the preview is the way I get it - text only.. Even more strange now?

Does anyone know how to comment out a section of HTML that one does not want to appear in the post?

I have used the { which stops it from appearing in the post, but the { then appear in the e-mail version.

anyone?

For the spanish talking people, I think you might find this useful.
Replace the commbull_phrases.php with this custom one for having it translated into spanish.

No thoughts?

Not really. Are you sure it is only going to 400 of your members. Generally vB breaks the mailing list across multiple pages to avoid timeout errors. It is possible that your browser is not auto forwarding to the next page in this process.

I know that TAZ use this to send bulletins to their 1500+ members and as far as I know they haven't had any problems. I only have a small board 225 members, but it has worked fine for me.

We sent around 3000 last month. Since it was our first mailing, I set the count to 100 per page. rex_b really hasn't provided a very clear idea of the failure and his environment. How many bulletins are you sending at a time and what is the failure mode? Does it just stop, or does it complete and some of them just aren't sent?

Regards,

Matt

i have a forum (abnehmen.com) and it has over 9,000 members ... never had any problems with it ... just takes forever.

Quick observation on a mini bug here. In commbull.php you have paths hardwired to the admincp dir, which naturally break if people have this set to something else ($admincpdir var in includes/config.php). Lines 56, 57, and 1385 of commbull.php should have admincp/blah.php changed either to $admincpdir/blah.php (while requiring includes/config.php), or some other settable ACP var in commbull.php itself.

All it does is says I have 2 pages of users 1/2 and 2/2 and it sends to those people.

NO failure notice or anything. It just doesn't send to everyone.

I'm confused.

Hi guys, just a quick question. I was wondering if anyone can tell me how I can force this hack to use a different forum style when mailing out?
In the commbull.php file I suspect its this line
$sql = "SELECT * FROM ". TABLE_PREFIX."style WHERE userselect > 0 LIMIT 1";
that needs to be altered but I'm having troubles.
Any helps would be great
thanks :)

I would like to change how the html email looks completely.... how do I do this?

one of my large forums the email refuses to preview, it runs for awhile and then just quits

Hello everyone,

This is rather bizzare... every time I send out a ComBull, the recepient sees random exclamations marks throughout the newsletter text. Some images fail to show up, because that exclamation gets inserted into the path! And it's totally random...

anyone has that problem?

Installed CommBull and after some editting of the commbull.php and the phrases.php (mainly language and html), got it working. A note for some users. My host had a limit of no more than 50 emails per hour from our server, but apon request they increased it to 500 for my site. They just wanted to know if I offered my users an "Opt out" from receiving the Newsletter. So if you have any problens with email flooding, check with your host. Most will accomodate you for a higher email output.
I also found that (for my site anyway) setting the email output to about 25 at a time with a one minute wait in-between seemed to work out quite well.
The only problem is that the emails will still not show Calendar events. And does anyone know how to make a cron job for this script?
John
Ps; Here's a sample of my finished html CommBull
And thanks grandeur_69 for the script!

Hi traderx,
Look in the commbull.php file around line 339 down to line 357. You shound see this at line 339: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html><head>. This is the start of the html part of the email. From that point on look down the file for html tags like <table>, <tr>, <td>, etc. Those are not all in the same place in the file as in between there are sql guerys, conditional statements, and php sript, etc.
What I did was to copy the original email html script from the Admin, place it in my html editor, make changes, and then carefully locate the appropiate place in the commbull.php file and substitute the changes. (make sure you save a backup of the original, just in case!)
Some of the language changes have to be made in the commbull_phrases file and there are a few in the commbull file itself.
Good luck,
John

Maybe it's just me, although after messing with this one line (around 42) for well over an hour I still see no way whatsoever to absolutely link the stylesheet. No matter what I add or adjust it still comes out:

...with no corresponding http:// path. What's everyone doing to solve this?

Include the entire path url, like
http://yoursite.com/forum/clientscri...f0f5-00004.css
Don't forget, it's an email, not a web page. It's going to be read by the users email client on thier computer. There is no folder for the email to read with the css file in it on thier computer. The path to the css file has to be full. You will have to write in the whole url yourself in the commbull.php file at that line. If you store your css as files rather than in the database, I suggest saving the css file in a separate file that the email url can "see" all the time. Because, if you change one little thing in the stylesheet from the Admin panel, the reference number for the stylesheet will change, and the emails won't get the correct css file. Besides, this way you can customize the email style separately from your board.
John

Okay, I figured it out. After another hour or two of useless code playing and searching to figure out exactly how the stylesheet was sourced, it finally ocurred to me to look in the database. Duh.

Lo and behold, a css field resides in the prefix_style table with the entire <link rel= style statement, which will look something like this:

All you have to do is go into phpMyAdmin and prepend the existing href= with the http path to your site. F.ex.:

Note this will also create an absolute path for the url to the stylesheet for the whole board. Like John pointed out however, soon as you change your CSS in the ACP this will be written over and you have to go back in and prepend the url again. From what I can see however, it doesn't mean you lose your CSS for already sent emails. Even if the CSS is changed the clientscript/vbulletin_css directory will still contain the old files (unless you go in and delete them).

SOmeone asked this question before, with no respoonse.

Does anyone know how to automate this to be sent out every week ?

I've run the script, sent out my first bulletin, but now the option to change settings within the "editoptions" screen isn't there.

Does anyone know which templates I need to change to allow this?

(Besides that, the script is great. It is the first time I've run the HTML version and it looks terrific.)

"Now...?" Do you mean it was never there, or it disappeared?

The install instructions are a little hard to find. There are links at the top and bottom of the page when you run the commbull.php script. I missed it the first time I ran it too.

Regards,

Matt