Administrative and Maintenance Tools - EPC vbMailer [LITE] All in ONE E-mail Solution

EPC vbMailer [LITE] for vBulletin

*** Image removed as it was hotlinking to another site and site does not allow for hotlinking ***

(Not just a hack, just a HUGE expansion in getting your communication professionally delivered effectively and efficiently to your forums members)

Brief Introduction:

What we have here is an expansion of a lot of tools that deal with ?effective? communication with your forums members by and through the vBulletin forums system. As you know there are many modifications on the vBulletin.org website that?ll help you manage all of these means, some are lacking other essential needs or you are simply too tired to figuring out which one doesn?t work with what hack. Overall, we have built EPC vBMailer to be the overall and ONLY solution to your vBulletin e-mailing needs. Because you request it in here, we will build it without any questions!

After endless reading on the forums at vbulletin.org, we have found it to be a wise decision to release a LITE and a FULL version, basically a trial version before you buy? Where the trial will not ever end, it?s just a lighter version to the FULL version which has an extended amount of features in it that handles ALL of your e-mailing needs in one!


Core Feature List:

• Templates
  • Add templates
  • Edit templates
  • Delete templates
• Autoresponders
  • Add autoresponders
  • Edit autoresponders
  • Delete autoresponders
• Compose Email
  • Type an email, or
  • Use a template
  • Schedule when to send
• Bounce Management
  • Logs into your SMTP info
  • Inactivates bounced emails
  • Deletes bounced emails from server
• Settings
  • Easily edit vbMailer Settings inside your config file
  • FULL version has it all built into the /admincp/ with more support

Templates Overview

• Enter a subject, text email and HTML email to easily send them out on-the-fly later
• Templates, like anything else in vbMailer, support variables

Autoresponder Overview

• Setup autoresponder sequences to automatically send out emails
• Very powerful for those of you who want to seamlessly and automatically advertise your forums, or give your users a friendly "nudge" to come back
• Yep, autoresponders support variables too

Compose Email Overview

• Choose a previously created template or enter a subject, text and HTML email
• Choose a time to run the campaign, allowing you to schedule the campaign for whenever you want

(meaning you can setup that advertisement email to run while you are on vacation, phew!)

• And did I mention, composing an email directly also supports variables

Review Campaigns Overview:

• Track how each of your campaigns is doing, by looking at how many emails were SENT, FAILED and READ
• Delete any upcoming campaigns

Bounce Management Overview:

• No more annoying bounce emails filling your Inbox
• Every time the cron runs, it automatically sets the email status to inactive on any bounced emails
• PM sent to user to update his/her e-mail address!

Example of a log when one is bounced:

Email sent [sadfjasdfj2234rr32ff@email.com] using [smtp]

#-Bounces---------------------#
Connected to mail.mydomainhere.com
Logged in as username@mydomainhere.com
Fetched message list

Found bounce [sadfjasdfj2234rr32ff@email.com]
sadfjasdfj2234rr32ff@email.com: Email inactivated
sadfjasdfj2234rr32ff@email.com: Bounce email deleted

Connection closed

Done

EPC vbMailer Variables Overview:

Although you can use anything in the 'user' table as a template variable, the most useful are provided in this list:
[userid]
[username]
[email]
[homepage]
[icq]
[aim]
[yahoo]
[msn]
[skype]
[posts]
[ipaddress]
[pmtotal]
[pmunread]
[warnings]

EPC vbMailer Variables Test Email

So basically you would setup and form e-mail going out to all as an example:

Dear [username],

Today it has come to our attention your posts total today are [posts] posts on the forums.

Total warnings you have on file are [warnings] warnings!

You have a total of [pmtotal] PM?s inside your inbox on the forums, also do note that you have a total of [pmunread] unread PM?s

Your webpage is located at: [homepage]

On file we have the following Instant Messengers:

ICQ: [icq]
AIM: [aim]
YAHOO: [yahoo]
MSN: [msn]
SKYPE: [skype]

Your User ID, which is a number and can be found to be as follows: [userid]

Your sign-up IP address was: [ipaddress]

Best regards,
EPC vbMailer and Team

EPC vbMailer Outcome E-mail

Enough of that one, below you?ll see the outcome of the e-mail:

Dear BillyBoyGates,

Today it has come to our attention your posts total today are 0 posts on the forums.

Total warnings you have on file are 0 warnings!

You have a total of 0 PM?s inside your inbox on the forums, also do note that you have a total of 0 unread PM?s

Your webpage is located at: http://www.billyboygates.com/

On file we have the following Instant Messengers:

ICQ: 999999
AIM: bloggermania
YAHOO: yahoosucks@yahoo.com
MSN: billyboygates@hotmail.com
SKYPE: skyperockstotally

Your User ID, which is a number and can be found to be as follows: 1

Your sign-up IP address was: 131.0.12.125

Best regards,
EPC vbMailer and Team

You can unsubscribe at any time by visiting the forums where this was sent from and requesting not to receive emails from administrators any more.

http://www.yourforums.com/forums2

Conclusion:

You have installed at LEAST 5+ separate hacks to mount up to what we just created but coded you here in the LITE version, do note this, in the FULL version for less than a happy meal you will have even more flexibility. Whether you wanted to run a newsletter, or send out a series of e-mails (autoresponders) or simply schedule the sending times and letting EPC vbMailer will do it for you seamlessly.

In the LITE version, you will need to note, there is a set limit on how many e-mails that can be sent out due to the core of the LITE wasn?t designed to handle UNLIMITED.

Make sure you check it out in the LITE first to see if this is something you would like, with full SUPPORT too you if you clicked install. Bottom line, we are just happy to accommodate anyone and everyone.

How do I get support?

Also comes with a 22 page End-User Documentation, all clean and sectioned out for you in PDF. Make sure you have Adobe READER v6+ not a RIPPER

Support is given to those who click INSTALL...

However if you have questions before installing do let us know, we have tested this on 3.6.8, and if you have a forums that is prior, please let us know if this works and report this here! Others will appreciate it a lot.

All support for the LITE version will be held here only if you click install, and if you purchase the full version all support is handled in the order received by our full-time reps in the CSC, NO support is held here for the FULL version!

So here's the LITE version and it comes with a full set of instructions and if you require any assistance on how to find feeds and what places are best for feeds, do post them in here.

Also if you post anything in here that has NOTHING to do with the hack and support, question related issues, i.e. Starting drama on anything not related to this hack, "it is no good", "I guess this will ruin this", and blah blah, keep your drama out please!

Copyright

/*
Please do not remove this Copyright notice.
As you see this is a free script accordingly under GPL laws and you will see
a license attached accordingly to GNU.
You may NOT rewrite another hack and release it to the vBulletin.org community or ELSEWHERE using this code without our permission due to the fact we have a full version and this full version is a paid version, as this version will differ but some
of the logistics are the same. So do NOT try to release a hack using any part of our code without written permission from us!
Copyright 2007, BlogToRank
*/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +
Change Log


#--------------v1.1-LITE--------------#

• 'Unique reads' statistic addition, no charts
  • vs. FULL 'Unique reads' & 'Link clicks', charts
• Attachment via compose email only
  • vs. FULL Saved attachments via templates, autoresponders or compose email
• Bounced emails set all communication via e-mail options to inactive
  • vs. FULL Bounced emails set all options to inactive & PMs user
• No link tracking
  • vs. FULL Link tracking and 'Link clicks' statistic

#--------------v1.2-FULL--------------#

• Campaign deletion
• Choose user group to send to
• Bounced email admin notification (Sent to admin PM)
• HTML/Text user option (Under User CP and upon user registration and is REQUIRED at registration)

#--------------v1.2-LITE--------------#

• Campaign deletion
• Bounced email user notification (previously only in FULL)

#--------------v1.2.3-LITE--------------#

• Fixed a security vulnerability to our the tracker and the /admincp/vbmailer.php
• Fixed a bug within our product install. (Recommend you do a fresh install of this product file)
• Fixed a few other minor things and we highly recommend a download and update immediately.

#--------------v1.5-LITE--------------#

• Fixed a hanging process within the Send E-Mail by the RUN Now being processed
• Added the Signature Line to be manually modified within the settings of LITE and FULL version
• Update to the nl2br to fix broken issues with Outlook Express of receiving text e-mails, because Microsoft decided to NOT respect the \r\n format, so it's known as the nl2br

  \r\n = "<br>"

• Few other snags cleaned up to put this to v1.5.

[aus_dave]

Originally Posted by blogtorank

Timezone is all setup on your mail server, admincp, the usercp. It sends out in respect to what you have configured there, it's not we modify the headers, it's your mail server itself.

Your PHP mailer distribution has a bug in it:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/inde...31&atid=385707

I would have made the change myself but you guys have encrypted the PHP mailer class in your script package (it's open source...what's up with that?).

Originally Posted by blogtorank

Why not post a few examples here in a text file you are sending and I'll test it out on ours and use "OUTLOOK Express" normally your e-mail client is the issue on that on how things are displayed. Even look at the above example under our description of this mod to see a "plain text" and the outcome as "plain text"

Nothing too complex - I typed in 3 lines separated with linefeeds and sent to a range of email clients, Outlook Express didn't display it correctly. I tested using our old mailer and this doesn't happen.

[JirQUEST]

Originally Posted by blogtorank

Here you go:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/m...ed_tasks_intro

Also, inside the task itself you'll see question marks for "Admin Help"

yup. checked that. but apparently it doesnt work out as i tried. is it possible that u might be able to guide me through this?

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by aus_dave

Good - I hope it improves the situation.

The timezone issue in the date needs to be fixed as it is giving mail meesages a high Spam Assassin score (timezone is invalid). Our server is in a .5 timezone so I don't know if that is part of the problem or not.

There also seems to be an issue with sending plain text emails and receiving them as text on Outlook Express. Line breaks are not included, either when typing direct into the text area or when pasting text from a text editor. I have tested this with vbMailer on Mac and PC and it occurs on both.

Originally Posted by aus_dave

Your PHP mailer distribution has a bug in it:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/inde...31&atid=385707

I would have made the change myself but you guys have encrypted the PHP mailer class in your script package (it's open source...what's up with that?).

What's up with what? Someone being a human being and that being a mistake there on obfuscation time (With your test script that we uploaded last night in and around 2-3:00AM). On v1.5 we did make sure the open source isn't obfuscated (All in all reality you can change modify the scripts or products that are within their TERMS)

To patch that if you like on 1/2 hour timezones feel free here to doing so until we factor that into our upcoming version to see (IF) any conflicts may occur for others.

[Inkybro]

Originally Posted by JirQUEST

yup. checked that. but apparently it doesnt work out as i tried. is it possible that u might be able to guide me through this?

I do not quite understand your issue. The email not sending and the task not running are two different issues. You posted your task output in a previous post, and I see that it says:

2: Do not run

To extend this a little bit for you, it means the email is scheduled to run after the current time. So if this is the issue, make sure you scheduled the email for the correct time.

If your task isn't running automatically, however, you should check the following:

Warning:
vBulletin?s scheduled tasks system does not constantly run on the server like cron and scheduled tasks in Windows?. Tasks are automatically run when a user browses your board, so if your board does not have any traffic at a given time, tasks scheduled to run then will not run until later.
vBulletin?s scheduled tasks also will not run when you board is turned off.

In other words, it all works assuming you have traffic on your board. If no one visits your site, the task won't run.

You may also want to check your footer template, as if it's been modified, this can cause trouble if the '$cronimage' code is removed.

[blogtorank]

#--------------v1.5-LITE & FULL--------------#

• Fixed a hanging process within the Send E-Mail by the RUN Now being processed
• PER REQUEST: Added the Signature Line to be manually modified within the settings of LITE and FULL version
• Update to the nl2br to fix broken issues with Outlook Express of receiving text e-mails, because Microsoft decided to NOT respect the \r\n format, so it's known as the nl2br

   \r\n = "<br>"

• Few other snags cleaned up to put this to v1.5.

See the attached screenshot for the FULL version of vbMailer's settings that is all done from the back-end rather than manually modd'n the config file.

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by aus_dave

Nothing too complex - I typed in 3 lines separated with linefeeds and sent to a range of email clients, Outlook Express didn't display it correctly. I tested using our old mailer and this doesn't happen.

This should be fixed within v1.5 now due to the Microsoft Outlook Express using crlf and and not the \n\r which now we have added the code to help alleviate this. Do update us here when you have time.

[JirQUEST]

Originally Posted by blogtorank

Here you go:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/m...ed_tasks_intro

Also, inside the task itself you'll see question marks for "Admin Help"

I am utterly confused. I tried earlier on by setting the time in the "Compose Email" portion. Then I went to the Scheduled Tasks, and arranged the time to fit the one in "Compose Email". Clicked "Run Now", and it sent. Then I tried with all my registered users, and nothing happens. How does this exactly work?

Also, I read that last night already, in a bid to solve my problem. Apparently nothing turns up.

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by JirQUEST

I am utterly confused. I tried earlier on by setting the time in the "Compose Email" portion. Then I went to the Scheduled Tasks, and arranged the time to fit the one in "Compose Email". Clicked "Run Now", and it sent. Then I tried with all my registered users, and nothing happens. How does this exactly work?

Also, I read that last night already, in a bid to solve my problem. Apparently nothing turns up.

It sends you say, then you tried to send to your registered users and nothing happens, I'm utterly confused now :| What bid? Do you have the FULL version? If so and if you have a issue, do create a support ticket on that with all of your login information via SSH / FTP, and make us a superadmin to the forums.

If this is a LITE issue, then what one are you referencing? If it's about the Scheduled tasks, what can we do there? Inkybro posted too you how that works...

Do let me know because we don't need to be confused too :erm:

[JirQUEST]

sorry. i meant it didn't send. crap. that was really a bad typo. and it's the full version. setting up a ticket now on your end.

[Inkybro]

Originally Posted by JirQUEST

sorry. i meant it didn't send. crap. that was really a bad typo. and it's the full version. setting up a ticket now on your end.

Do you have the 1.5 update?

Create a ticket and give us superadmin and we can upgrade it for you.