Did you receive my email with the screenshots?

Yes. As a matter of fact I did. Everything there appears to be fine. I'll have to look at it again this evening when I get home. Do you have access to phpMyAdmin? Can you export the data for your test accounts only and email it to me?

Thanks

Hi -
I love this mod, but my "sent from" email address gets output as blank and thus the email gets marked as spam. The subject and content text are fine.
Any suggestions?

Install the 2.2.1 version if you are running vb4.x.x. That bug has been fixed.

Hi TalkVirginia,

this is long needed mod and I thank you for that one. It does what it should do. But there is a major downside (in particular there are 2) in using it - and yesterday we´ve learned it the hard way, what it is about.

Our ISP forwarded us abuse notices they´d received after installing your mod. As most of the forums out there, since the launch on the edge of this century we have gained a large number of accounts in the database (~30k). In the meanwhile many of them have invalid email-adresses, since the accountholder deleted or changed his emailaccount.

On that basis the mailhosting companies noticed a bounce rate, which has reached the indication level for spam. AFAIR, the common treshhold is at 10%. For that reason hotmail was the first who dropped an abuse report to our ISP, a second one followed by a european hoster forced our ISP to shut down our server immediatly. That´s a responsible behaviour, so we don´t argue with em. They got in contact with us and we were able to explain what happend, deactivated the reminder mod and we were back online.

Your mod, like any other mod referring to email features, shows the lack of checking if a users mailaccount is still existing before sending and a bounce management. Nothing brings you and your forums closer to the spam blacklist, as sending out dozens of emails to not existing mailaccounts and sending these ones periodicly. That´s truly the best way to get your forums mailadresses and IP´s blocked.

What do you think? Could you implement at least a bounce management into this mod here? Something, that deactivates all email functionality for hard or softbounces and brings them to the usergroup for awaiting an email verification/activation? That could avoid a lot of trouble for forums with a userbase +10k.

Hi Marv,

First, let me say that I apologize for the issues the mod has caused. Secondly, I am sure you will be pleased to know I am currently working on a bounced email manager for this mod. Unfortunately, my time to work on development is limited and I will do my best to get something out as soon as my time will allow.

EDIT: Marv, I did a little research on checking to see if an email address exists before sending an email. It looks like most email servers are denying this validation to protect users from spambots. However, the closest that we can get to is at least checking to verify that the domain name is a valid mail server and that "MX" or mail records do exist on that server. I'm currently testing this change locally. If you would like to try this out now as long as you feel comfortable making the change yourself.

1. Open the functions_remindermail.php file that resides in your forums includes folder in your favorite text editor (such as notepad++ or textpad).
2. Scroll down to or about line 100.

Below this line:
Insert:
3. Now.... On or about line 131:

Change:
To:
This should cut down on some of the invalid emails that go out. Let me know how this works for you, or if you have questions.

Thanks

Greetings fellow VB admins,

As I'm working on the bounced email detection for this mod, I've been thinking that I may release the bounce detection as a separate addon. Here's a couple reasons why:

1. I know in the past since I've been working on the reminders addon I've gotten responses that it's confusing. Adding additional functionality and settings may only add to the confusion.

2. With all the additional settings for the bounce detection the settings screen is scrolling about 2 - 3 screens. More could be added which would make it even longer.

Just some thoughts I'm throwing out there. What are your thoughts. Tonight I'll post a screen shot of the settings screen and you can see what I mean. :)

How this will work together? This is main question. If it can work well together, no problem.

For example, if mail gets bounced, will user change his usergroup? This sometime would be good for me. I want just that users with bounced mail doesn't receive remainder mails.

Hi TalkVirginia,
somehow I must have missed your last post. I appreciate your fast response.

Your suggestion to check up on the domains seems to be a good effort, but wont get even close to what you are trying with the bounce manager now (based on EZ´s Bounce management?). The Domains will be there, yahoo, gmail, hotmail and all the other mailproviders. Guess that wont help much or is only the drop into the sea.

I´m looking forward to your newest announcement - or let me call it your new project. Personal I would recommend a seperate bounce mod. There are lot´s of email-mods and built-in vb functions which could benefit all from a sepereate one, in case someone don´t wants to install the email reminder.

Thumbs up, good to see you´re taking care of that.
Kudos.

Id go for a seperate bounce manager! and def. in need of one too :)