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 Tigur

I had it set to 180 days and i was getting reports of users getting emailed 5 times in a row - i have retry set to two

unless someone can point out a serious flaw in my code, members will never be sent the email 5 times in a row unless you have set the frequency to something low.

it's impossible.

[deezelpope]

Still working beautifully here...

[Smoothie]

Originally Posted by rapsearch

question...

I want to disable this feature for inactive old members who request to be taken off the list BUT..i don't want to delete their old profile.. how can i prevend these members from getting these automated messages?? Can i set 'receive admin messages' in their profile to no?.. will that work?

Here's what you do. Those that request to be taken off the list, move their accounts from registered members to the awaiting email verification group. This way the emails will not be sent to them, their accounts remain active and they will need to verify their account before they can ever post or receive any communications from your site.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Tigur

I had it set to 180 days and i was getting reports of users getting emailed 5 times in a row - i have retry set to two

You haven't "set retry to 2". What you have done is set it so that inactive members are emailed every 2 days. Set that value to a minimum of 30 days.

[nintendo]

It sure would be nice if it still had an E-Mail Quantity option to only send say 1,000 E-mails a day!

Originally Posted by HOST-KSA.COM

If I have more than 20 thousands of members are inactive .. will this reminder affect my server ?

Plan on seeing your server be as slow as a slug for hours. I just ran it for the first time. It's been over two hours and the server is still as slow as a slug, on php pages. It's still sending E-mails out via sendmail. 10,261 members are geting E-mailed. load average is as high as around 10.98, 10.77, 10.04

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by nintendo

It sure would be nice if it still had an E-Mail Quantity option to only send say 1,000 E-mails a day!

Plan on seeing your server be as slow as a slug for hours. I just ran it for the first time. It's been over two hours and the server is still as slow as a slug, on php pages. It's still sending E-mails out via sendmail. 10,261 members are geting E-mailed. load average is as high as around 10.98, 10.77, 10.04

Uh, there actually IS a setting to control this:

Email Quantity
How many emails to send each time cron runs (Lower means faster board, but longer to send all emails. Higher, vice versa.)

Set this to a low number. Mine is set to 3.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by nintendo

It sure would be nice if it still had an E-Mail Quantity option to only send say 1,000 E-mails a day!



Plan on seeing your server be as slow as a slug for hours. I just ran it for the first time. It's been over two hours and the server is still as slow as a slug, on php pages. It's still sending E-mails out via sendmail. 10,261 members are geting E-mailed. load average is as high as around 10.98, 10.77, 10.04

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Uh, there actually IS a setting to control this:



Set this to a low number. Mine is set to 3.

I actually removed this, as the cron only runs once a day now, and adds all the mails to the mail queue, and if it is slow due to SENDING the emails, then this is down to vbulletin.

If this is becoming a problem, I suggest you revert to 1.09 untill i can come up with a better solution for all.

[Mischievious]

Have you considered adding an feature in the options, where you can push a button to send the emails right away. Instead of waiting for the cron to do it?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Mischievious

Have you considered adding an feature in the options, where you can push a button to send the emails right away. Instead of waiting for the cron to do it?

i could, but you can just go into the cron and run it manually. yes, im lazy.

[nintendo]

It worked great. Before the server was even done sending the E-mails all out, visitors were already coming back!!

Hopefully the server being slow will be just once a month, since it's set to them geting E-mailed once every 30 days, so the 10,261 people won't get them for another month!!! It took about four hours for them all to be sent out! And this is on a dedicated server!!

If I changed to the older version, would the people that just got E-mailed get the E-Mail again, next time it does it, or would it know they were just E-Mailed?