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
***

[joeychgo]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

joeychgo, I'd suggest you check your email server. It's sending in HTML/rich text as far as I know. The only way I can see users getting different emails is if you edited the default email and one got it before the edit and one after.

Other emails, including combull (which uses HTML email), send just fine. The problem is in the hack, not my server or my clients.



*

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Fungsten

post a screenshot. But here are the settings:

Is this product active? Yes

Days of Inactivity

How many days a user can go without posting before they are considered inactive. 30

How often to send a reminder email once a member has become inactive. 30

List the usergroups that you wish to send the emails to here. (Seperate by commas) eg. 2,3,4,7
2,26,32,37


Set the inactivity based on the last post made by the user. If set to no, the inactivity will be set by the last activity field (ie, when the member last visited) Yes.

You're credited, etc.

Thanks.

Maybe you just dont have inactive users? Providing the plugin is running and saying "No emails to send" then as far as im concerned everything is working okay. it uses simple conditionals.

Originally Posted by AzzidReign

I have a question about the options...

With "Days of Inactivity" you have this as the description:
How many days a user can go without posting before they are considered inactive.

And then an option closer to the bottom is "Inactivity based on last post" with the description of:
Set the inactivity based on the last post made by the user. If set to no, the inactivity will be set by the last activity field (ie, when the member last visited)

So...is the first question going off of the last time they posted? Or the last time that they were on the board? I would like it if it was the last time they were on the board since I have a lot of lurkers which the "welcome" mod should take care of them if they want to ever post. I just don't want to bother members that are on the site and just decide not to post...

Thanks for this mod tho! It's great. I'll be sure to keep the footer ad on my site for ya

When i wrote the plugin description, the plugin worked only from lastpost activity, and you didn't have the option. I forgot to update the descriptions when i gave users the choice.

[trickfly]

When I clicked run in schedule tasks I got this:

---------------------------

Inactive User Reminder Emails

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

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/trickfly/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

--------------------------

How to correct this ?

[cashpath]

Where would I change the return address in this? Its set to nobody@ right now... I would like to change it.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by trickfly

When I clicked run in schedule tasks I got this:

---------------------------

Inactive User Reminder Emails

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

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening '/home/trickfly/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

--------------------------

How to correct this ?

It looks like you forgot to upload remindermail.php to your /forum/includes/cron/ directory.

Originally Posted by cashpath

Where would I change the return address in this? Its set to nobody@ right now... I would like to change it.

Admin CP | vBulletin Options | vBulletin Options | Site Name / URL / Contact Details

Scroll down to find: Webmaster's Email

[cowudders14]

Originally Posted by quasan

jap got the same problem as joeychgo

it's plain text with htmltags throughout the text. barely readable

and no, it's not a client issue, because other htmlmails do work

Ditto here - Installed and working, but the emails are in plain text with html tags. Looking at the source of the message, I can see it is sending with

MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\nContent-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\nMIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Thus, the email readers are quite correctly displaying it as plain text, despite the html tags in it.

[djbaxter]

So would the fix be to change

PHP Code:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" 


to

PHP Code:

Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" 


???

[cashpath]

Admin CP | vBulletin Options | vBulletin Options | Site Name / URL / Contact Details

Scroll down to find: Webmaster's Email

hmm.. that is set..

I guess I meant the return-path

When my user activation emails go out they show my Webmasters email..

When this goes out is shows nobody@server

[Fungsten]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

Maybe you just dont have inactive users? Providing the plugin is running and saying "No emails to send" then as far as im concerned everything is working okay. it uses simple conditionals.

I've checked. There are users who have not logged in for 30 days+; which is what I have it set to. I'll look around in the some other settings though.

[kenfuzed]

I installed this today and set it up per the instructions. To test it out I manually kicked it off job but it only sent out to 7 members even though there are over 1000 inactive. Two of the members emailed just joined this morning.

What could be causing this?