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
***

[AzzidReign]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

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.

Thanks for the explanation, I figured that's what happened and I was hoping to point it out. Great mod, thank you.

Also, could there be an option to send to the people who chose not to receive emails from the administrators? I would like to send 1 email to these people since it's a lot of them and then just leave it at that.

[Alibass]

Originally Posted by cowudders14

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.

I am having the same issue. Has anyone heard if there is a fix for this? I was having no problems until I upgraded from 1.09 to 1.10

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Alibass

I am having the same issue. Has anyone heard if there is a fix for this? I was having no problems until I upgraded from 1.09 to 1.10

That I believe was the switch to the vbmail system from regular email.

[kenfuzed]

Originally Posted by 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?

Still not working, log states "no emails to send" I'm ready to uninstall.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

That I believe was the switch to the vbmail system from regular email.

yes, that is the case - vbmail sends out plain text. im trying to think of a work around.

[croportal]

how to remove from footer your link to the site

i have edit php file like this

if($vbulletin->options['reminder_emailfooter']){
$message = $message . "";
}


and still showing

Forum

[croportal]

i now see that you can removed the link

i have uninstall the product

this is really stupid move

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by croportal

how to remove from footer your link to the site

i have edit php file like this

if($vbulletin->options['reminder_emailfooter']){
$message = $message . "";
}


and still showing

Forum

rtfm?

[croportal]

rtfm??????

i dont speak english very well

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by croportal

rtfm??????

i dont speak english very well

it means that if you read the instructions, you will find your answers