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
***

[Leo Brazil]

Originally Posted by Leo Brazil

I'm using your previous version on 3.7.2 PL1 and working fine so far.

The only problem I'm facing is the e-mails sent to users are not sent using admin e-mail address just like regular Vb notifications. It tooks the sender as origin path of my system like directions for admin mail box. The e-mails are sent anyway but e-mails systems like Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail put them as spam.

I tried to find in your code a reason for this but no lucky so far. Any tips ?

Originally Posted by Osama11

no ... still same problem its sending a email from host email adresss.. ********@host48.hostmonster.com
its not showing site contect.. i mean site name.....can u plzz help me ?

Despite not upgraded yet for the new version, it seems I'm having the same issue as reported by Osama.

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

it is the vbulletin mail system that sends this out. and uses the $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] in the headers.

go into "http://www.yoursite.com/admincp/options.php?do=options&dogroup=address" and is the webmaster email set right?

I'm sure all my configs are 100% correct at this point. I can assure you this because all my e-mails sent by Vb are correct but this one.

I saw in your code you use $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] that should to the job correctly and that's the reason I'm busting my brains out....lol....

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Leo Brazil

Despite not upgraded yet for the new version, it seems I'm having the same issue as reported by Osama.



I'm sure all my configs are 100% correct at this point. I can assure you this because all my e-mails sent by Vb are correct but this one.

I saw in your code you use $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] that should to the job correctly and that's the reason I'm busting my brains out....lol....

this is what i cant understand- it should use the webmaster email, and it uses the vbulliten mailqueue. mine are sent out fine with no issues and from the correct email address .... maybe try the email specified in the config file? that is the only other thing i can think of...

[Osama11]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

it is the vbulletin mail system that sends this out. and uses the $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] in the headers.

go into "http://www.yoursite.com/admincp/options.php?do=options&dogroup=address" and is the webmaster email set right?

yea its right.. but its not sending a email from that email adresss

even in cofiq.php. my webmaster email adress is same which is in vbulletin option ['webmasteremail'] ..

[dfc005]

A great feature would be the ability to send it from a different email address. I like to send these sort of emails from a "donotreply" email, rather than our "contactus" email.

That way, I don't get spammed myself by bounce back and returned emails.

Would it be possible that on install of the product, it grabs the ['webmasteremail'] and sets it as the default email address to use but you could update it to something different?

[Osama11]

Originally Posted by Osama11

yea its right.. but its not sending a email from that email adresss

even in cofiq.php. my webmaster email adress is same which is in vbulletin option ['webmasteremail'] ..

1st its not sendign a emil from vbulletin optyion webmaster email..


n 2nd my host spended the account because of an excessive amount of emails going out of your vbulletin script at once.

what should i do now ?

[iogames]

Quick question Chris: somewhere on this thread I read something abut to run the CRON to make sure it works, I went there didn't see nothing that belonged to your hack... do I missing something?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by dfc005

A great feature would be the ability to send it from a different email address. I like to send these sort of emails from a "donotreply" email, rather than our "contactus" email.

That way, I don't get spammed myself by bounce back and returned emails.

Would it be possible that on install of the product, it grabs the ['webmasteremail'] and sets it as the default email address to use but you could update it to something different?

very good idea - i will add a "sepcify 'from' email address" in the config next.

Originally Posted by Osama11

1st its now sendign a emil from vbulletin optyion webmaster email..


n 2nd my host spended the account because of an excessive amount of emails going out of your vbulletin script at once.

what should i do now ?

first thing you should do is maybe reduce the "how many users to process per cycle" to 1.
how many emails are we talking about? I can add limiters on the sending of emails. i'll make a pre-mailqueue queue.

Originally Posted by iogames

Quick question Chris: somewhere on this thread I read something abut to run the CRON to make sure it works, I went there didn't see nothing that belonged to your hack... do I missing something?

I removed the need for cron in the 1.2 update. it uses plugins to run and is based on page loads. every time you load the page it checks for inactive users.

[Osama11]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

first thing you should do is maybe reduce the "how many users to process per cycle" to 1.
how many emails are we talking about? I can add limiters on the sending of emails. i'll make a pre-mailqueue queue.

hmm 40,000 users......but still its not sending email from vbulletin option[webmasteremail] its still sending from host ....the same email adress the 1 told u before..

[Osama11]

how to modify the headers.... i wanna changed the email adresss.... becz its sending a eamil from my host email adress ******@host**.hostmonster.com ..... i want to show a site contect .. how can i do that??????????

plzzz tell me..some 1 plzz help me

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Osama11

how to modify the headers.... i wanna changed the email adresss.... becz its sending a eamil from my host email adress ******@host**.hostmonster.com ..... i want to show a site contect .. how can i do that??????????

plzzz tell me..some 1 plzz help me

I will add a "From Email Address" option tonight.