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
***

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

I should add the following to my post above. Even though I have a user in my Admin group who has not logged onto the board since 2006, I get the following results when I run the cron job manually:

Inactive User Reminder Emails

Done

Looking at the php code, it appears that it should say:

Inactive User Reminder Emails

mailing test@test.com (done)

Done

but I don't see anything in between the lines even though clearly this test user i set up does qualify for a mail according to the parameters I set up..

i will have a look at it to see if i have missed anything.

[GCC LLC]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

you mean you are logging on as a diferent admin, setting your other account's lastactivity to june, and while on the second admin account running the cron resulting in no emails?

That is correct. I basically set up a pseudo-administrator to test this out. Really, I just want to see what the email looks like and tweak it before it gets sent out to the 7,000 or so users that it's going to go to.

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

what is output when you run the cron manually - it should say who is being emaild?

See above post... There's nothing in between the lines... no one being emailed even though this userid qualifies for an email. Even tested it out on a non-administrator that i put into a "test group" and it still doesn't go out.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by GCC LLC

That is correct. I basically set up a pseudo-administrator to test this out. Really, I just want to see what the email looks like and tweak it before it gets sent out to the 7,000 or so users that it's going to go to.



See above post... There's nothing in between the lines... no one being emailed even though this userid qualifies for an email. Even tested it out on a non-administrator that i put into a "test group" and it still doesn't go out.

i am having the same problem - im just putting some debug info in there to test - ill get back to you.

[GCC LLC]

I just downloaded this hack about 2 hours ago if that helps you any.. Not sure when you put it up but whatever changed from the last version to this one seems to have broken something. Can't wait to try it out... Looks great, thanks for your effort!

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

my reasoning was that i didnt want emails to be sent out before people had updated the template.

Good point. I had forgotten but that is exactly what happened to me when I installed your first version.

[C Braithwaite]

Figured it out - when you install the plugin, it sets the last email sent by default to == the users lastpost date, not it's last activity. so even if you set the last activity and last post to sometime in the last month/year/whatever, it wont email the user until the frequency period elapses.

I will update the install query and release an update later tonight.

[obmob]

Great idea, hope it works on my site

Oh i shall wait for an update!

[morrow]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

if you read the first post:



it's a simple plugin, not rocket science!

i designed it for my own forum, and it does the job i wanted it to do and i thought it may be useful for other people (which i might add, has beenk) so if anyone doesn't like it then just lump it.

Frankly, I don't know why you're giving this guy the time of day. I haven't installed this hack yet but I'm getting ready to. If it works, Great! If not, then I ask questions and possibly get it to work. This guy has been nothing but RUDE, and I agree with you... If you don't like the mod, go build your own; but certainly don't come on here and bash a guy who has already gone out of his way with just building this hack. You should try asking questions and possibly learn something along the way instead of bashing him.

Constructive critisism is always healthy...

[GCC LLC]

Yeah, agreed. I can do my fair share of coding (and usually it's just enough to get me by...) and when I see people bashing a programmer it gets under my skin. If you don't like the results of a free hack, go pay for one. You shouldn't expect things for free in life. You should be grateful if something useful comes along for free.

[simalert]

After setting up I ran it manually from the vBulletin scheduled task manager and got the following error

Inactive User Reminder Emails

Warning: include_once(/home/simalert/public_html/forum/./includes/cron/remindermail.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /admincp/cronadmin.php on line 108

Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/simalert/public_html/forum/./includes/cron/remindermail.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /admincp/cronadmin.php on line 108

Done

I thought it meant I hadn't uploaded the remindermail.php file to the right place, but I checked and it's definitely in forum root.

Any ideas please?

Thanks