Mini Mods - Email reminder for inactive users

Inactive reminder emails. This mod was designed to send out a reminder to inactive members to try and win them back.

***1.2.7 Update***
This update includes built in support for bouncing emails. The script will automatically detect the bounced mail, mark it as bounced so the user is not to be contacted again so as to avoid spam, and then move that user into a seperate usergroup. This plugin is still in it's testing stages, but I have addressed the bugs mentioned previously regarding the emailing side of things.

This is important so keep reading
To install this plugin and take advantage of the bounced email features you are going to need to follow these instructions very carefully. I can not gaurentee that they will work to the letter as this will be based on each persons individual hosting settings.

Step 1: Pre Install
Before you touch this product you need to do the following

• Create an "inactive" usergroup
• Set up a "bounce to" email address
  Pick an email address that you want to use as your bounced email address. Im using "bounce@icora.co.uk". feel free to use whatever you wish.
• Add a email message filter
  This is the hard part. You need to set up a filter that will 'pipe' an email sent to the above email address.
  I am using Cpanel 11 and this is how i have mine set up:
  Rules: 'To' 'Equals' 'bounce@icora.co.uk'
  Actions: 'Pipe to program' with the setting: |/usr/local/bin/php /home/icora/public_html/forum/bounce.php
  This will depend entirely on your settings and structure so you may have to do a little research. It would be very helfull if people who have to use diferent configurations would post them on here.
• Go into vBulletin options, and find the options for 'Emails'. there is a setting asking you if you want to use '-f'. set this to yes.
• While still inn the email options set the 'Bounce Email Address' to your above address.

Step 2: Install
Remove all previous trace of this modification, and upload all the files in the "upload" folder to your base directory of the server.
Go into your product management section and add a new product. upload the XML file with overwrite selected.
Refresh your admin CP to load the new menu items. Just under the "users" group you will find an "Inactive Reminders" group. open that up and click on settings.
Play with these settings and options to suit for the most part. when you come down to the bounce settings you MUST use the same email address as the one you created above.
Set to active and save.

I must re-iterate that this version has not been widely tested, but the simulations i have ran have worked. I look forward to your feedback!

Features:

• Select the period of time before a user is considered inactive.
• Select how many emails to send to each inactive user per inactivity period
• Choose weather inactivity is based on members "Last Post" or their "Last Visit"
• Specify how often followup emails are sent
• Specify alternative emails to send to reduce repetition
• Keep a log of all inactive users contacted

Planned Updates:

• More detail in reports
• ...such as
• Which useres returned
• Effectivness stats
• Email validity

**1.2.1 Update***
Added more detail to the reports section. You can now see the email address, and quickly indicate which emails were invalid. You can link directly to that user to edit as you wish.
I have fixed some errors which have been crashing people's database. Please post any problems if you can.

**1.2.3 Update***
Fixed several problems with escaping strings
Stopped database errors locking up site
***

**1.2.4 Update***
Added a "From Email" so you can specify your own email address to send the reminders from.
Fixed potential bug for people who do not use the mail queue.

Anyone having problems with sending emails out too fast, and multiple emails being sent need to consider changing their email settings in vbulletin options.
People with emails going out too fast - edit Number of Emails to Send Per Batch to a lower amount
People with multiple emails sending - edit Use Mailqueue System to "Yes, with locking"
***

**1.2.5 Update***
Added more stats in the reports page, also added a "Send test email" option so users can test the functionality of the mod
***

[bugzy]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

That is a little confusing.

It actually means "How long do you want to wait after sending the first email before you send another one, assuming the member is inactive?".

So if Days of Inactivity = 90 and Email Frequency = 30, that means the add-on will wait until 90 days after the last visit (or post depending on the settings) and then send an email, followed by another email reminder 30 days later, and another 30 days after that.

Perfect, shouild probably add that definition in the original post

thanks for the hack hope it works !!

[Sempiterna]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

That is a little confusing.

It actually means "How long do you want to wait after sending the first email before you send another one, assuming the member is inactive?".

Hmm, why not put that clarification in the options instead of:

How often to send a reminder email once a member has become inactive.

Because i installed it a couple of days ago, and at first i had happy people coming back to my forum, and now i had to send a humble apology mail to all of them because I had that setting set to "1". I assumed from reading the option, that it would send the mail only once!

So unfortunately the plugin kind of backfired on me

[Robbey]

This, yes.. This is infact the BEST mod Ive come across since Inferno VBShout lite

Better then that and mgc, so useful! Thanks!

[MadK]

Wow! Thank you!

[cOOter1975]

Installed!

[therogueforums]

Right... used this product for quite some time, loved it. Upgraded to 3.7.... now all emails are showing the default account email as the sender, which is NOT good. Uninstalled until support can be provided.

[SVTCobraLTD]

Had the item uninstalled and it again, sent out messages to all my members. Had to remove all the files and everything as this is not working correctly for me after months of it working fine. Not sure why it stopped.

[bugzy]

So I sent the CRON Schedule Task to run every day at 4:00AM and increased the Email Quantity to 25 each time. Is that right?

It seems the default schedule was every minute, which seems excessive.

[CLF]

INSTALLED!!!

Thank you!

[LCN2007]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

1.09 isn't there because 1.11 was ever unsafe. The person who posted the warning must have downloaded the add-on from some other site - s/he didn't get it here.

1.09 is there because it is stable and 1.11 is buggy on some installations. By all means, feel free to try 1.11 but it may not work for you.

Version 1.09 is what I'm using and what I recommend for others

Thanks for your info im installing 1.09