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
***

[DeMagH]

Pretty easy to install:

To install, upload remindermail.php to your ./includes/cron/ dir, and import the product xml
Options are in admincp options menu, where you should edit the settings.

that's what is mentioned in the text file i downloaded with the hack, doesn't seem as complicated as the marks above indicated. Just a simple one file upload and no template changes done by users at all, should clarify this in the first post.

just an advice for ppl out there, i was doing this manually for inactive users and i got some responses in new threads stating that "we trusted your website with our email addresses, you shouldn't be threatening us with your emails and some other users reported it as spam "which will cause huge forums to collapse ASAP as most hosting service providers don't allow spam, so they may stop your hosting plans for the violation of one of their policies" i myself got a warning before i stopped sending emails to inactive users"

Requesting a feature in this hack:
-To have a link within the email msg stating if you don't want to receive this email again please "click here", to unsubscribe the user from such mailing list if he desires, will protect us all from being reported as spammers.
-To have the ability to allow/disallow forum users from setting pre-reminder time.

Finally:
thanks for the hack, pretty good idea to have this managed automatically.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by DeMagH

just an advice for ppl out there, i was doing this manually for inactive users and i got some responses in new threads stating that "we trusted your website with our email addresses, you shouldn't be threatening us with your emails and some other users reported it as spam "which will cause huge forums to collapse ASAP as most hosting service providers don't allow spam, so they may stop your hosting plans for the violation of one of their policies" i myself got a warning before i stopped sending emails to inactive users"

Requesting a feature in this hack:
-To have a link within the email msg stating if you don't want to receive this email again please "click here", to unsubscribe the user from such mailing list if he desires, will protect us all from being reported as spammers.

That's quite easy to add in the Admin options in the existing mod. Just create your email content to include the link. Mine provides specific details:

<p>Hello, $username!</p>
<p>It's been some time since your last visit to $bbtitle.</p>
<p>You might be interested in having another look. We have added several features and enhancements to the forums, as well as many new members and new topics added every day.</p>
<p>If you don't remember your password, you can request it here: <a href="$forumurl/login.php?do=lostpw">$forumurl/login.php?do=lostpw</a></p>
<p>You can now keep up to date with new topics at $bbtitle by subscribing to the Psychlinks Forum Newsletter. Click on your <a href="http://forum.psychlinks.ca/usercp.php"User CP</a> link in the top navigation bar of any forum page and select < href="http://forum.psychlinks.ca/profile.php?do=editoptions">Edit Options</a>. Then scroll down to the Messaging & Notification section and check the box next to Subscribe to Psychlinks Forum Newsletter.</p>
<p>We hope to see you back soon.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>If you do not wish to receive further emails of this nature, please log into your UserCP at <a href="http://forum.psychlinks.ca/profile.php?do=editoptions">http://forum.psychlinks.ca/profile.php?do=editoptions</a> and uncheck the box next to Receive Email from Administrators.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Administrator</p>
$bbtitle
<p><a href="$homeurl">$homeurl</a></p>

Originally Posted by DeMagH

-To have the ability to allow/disallow forum users from setting pre-reminder time.

Try the solution above. I think this option is superfluous and probably self-defeating. If it were included, I'd disable it. Just use a reasonable repeat interval, not shorter than once per month. And include the "unsubscribe" instructions in every email your forum sends out.

[DeMagH]

@djbaxter
thanks for the reply. Though, I don't want the user to disable receiving emails from admins because of the reminder. There are account deletion notices, banning notices and finally warning notices i am sending to the whole usergroup whenever a user of the usergroup violates the forums rules. I don't want a bunch of users to disable receiving emails from admins just because of the reminder, i kinda want it to be separate, i don't know if this is clear enough or not.

About the 2nd point, you misunderstood me as i wasn't clear enough, I want the user to have the option of setting the time to a week/2 weeks/1 month/2 months/3 months/6 months from his profile, not totally disabling the reminder, some users though won't be able to set this time so the emails sent to them will take the default period set in the hack options.

the 2nd point is not that important but i think my forums might benefit from such a feature.

[criscokid]

Originally Posted by bada_bing

I would like to install this mod on my 3.5.3 site,, Will this 3.6.x version work?

Will this mod work on 3.5.x?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by criscokid

Will this mod work on 3.5.x?

dont see why not - try it?

[Tom_S]

Quick question.
After installing it worked perfect. I then re-ran it manually again a bit later after chaning the time frame from 7 days and it now is showing this:

Inactive User Reminder Emails

mailing example@yahoo.com (failed)
mailing example2@sbcglobal.net (failed)
mailing example3@centene.com (failed)

Done

Those are examples of course of email addresses.

Does this check for validity of email address and this could cause it or am I looking at a host problem?

Thanks

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Tom_S

Quick question.
After installing it worked perfect. I then re-ran it manually again a bit later after chaning the time frame from 7 days and it now is showing this:

Inactive User Reminder Emails

mailing example@yahoo.com (failed)
mailing example2@sbcglobal.net (failed)
mailing example3@centene.com (failed)

Done

Those are examples of course of email addresses.

Does this check for validity of email address and this could cause it or am I looking at a host problem?

Thanks

you will get a failed if for whatever reason the php mail command fails.

i really couldn't speculate as to why

[Tom_S]

So it isn't checking for the email account being valid then so it has to be my hosting messing with sendmail again.

Okay...thanks

[Jafo232]

Ideally, it would be nice if this hack also allowed an option to delete a user after X notifications and no activity (or posts).

Edit: or at least move them to another usergroup..

[cashpath]

Edit: or at least move them to another usergroup..

That would be a great addition..