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
***

[RedTrinity]

Ok well I think I am gonna wait a bit until the bugs are resolved before I use this one again... I started it emailing reminders to inactive members just now, and not longer after it started, the whole forum went down with a database error.

Disabled the plugin system via config.php and turned this one off to get access again, and now after checking the mailout log, according to that it emailed the last couple of people about 30-40 times over

The last version did the same thing on our forum too, was emailing the same members over and over again every 10 mins when it was supposed to do so every 90 days, so I had to stop using that one too

I do appreciate the efforts though, just think I might wait until its safe from issues like this in future as I don't want to get in trouble for spamming.

Cheers,

Nikki.

[bugriders]

C Braithwaite , that must be logic of course. The user is deleted from the database.

Maybe he was standing still in que...

I have asked him to let me know when he receive that email again. If so... there must be something wrong (maybe in database?)

Thanks for the reply.

[RedTrinity]

Ok it may be possible all those emails didn't go out afterall - even though according to the log it emailed about about 100 people, nobody has logged in at all from that list since then. Generally when reminders are sent out, the aftermath is MIA members showing up out of the blue to have a look around.

Maybe the database error prevented them all going out?

Will be relieved if this is the case since I know those two members didn't get spammed afterall

[tekguru]

Okay will give the new version a go later and see how it goes!

Fingers crossed!

[dfc005]

I'm also having a few issues with this. First, some of my members have special characters in their usernames such as '', /, etc and this is causing lots of problems when it tries to insert new rows into the database as they are no properly escaped.

Secondly, when I disable the mod in Settings, it is still trying to insert users into the mailqueue and reminder_log so it's obviously not actually disabled.

[dfc005]

Originally Posted by dfc005

I'm checking out the Report for Inactive Users and it doesn't seem to be showing unique users at all. A bunch of userid/usernames are repeated lots of times. Is that a bug?

This is obviously a serious bug. I have users report that they've received 1000s of emails. Doh! Also found that it was practically impossible to stop the mod from sending emails. I disabled the plugins, disabled the mod and finally, had to uninstall it to stop.

I really like this mod and the old version was working fine for months for me. I was excited about the new version as the reporting seemed like it would be a good but am having endless troubles with the latest version!

[C Braithwaite]

so long as the bug reports come in, ill keep fixing them. ill get right onto this soon as ive eaten.

[Osama11]

no ... still same problem its sending a email from host email adresss.. ********@host48.hostmonster.com

its not showing site contect.. i mean site name.....can u plzz help me ?

[C Braithwaite]

I've updated this product to stop database errors locking up the site - i've also addressed the other issues mentioned, however I cant figure out why users would be spammed with mails .. i have an idea, and i hope it is resolved now.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Osama11

no ... still same problem its sending a email from host email adresss.. ********@host48.hostmonster.com


its not showing site contect.. i mean site name.....can u plzz help me ?

it is the vbulletin mail system that sends this out. and uses the $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] in the headers.

go into "http://www.yoursite.com/admincp/options.php?do=options&dogroup=address" and is the webmaster email set right?