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
***

[GBSteve]

Been watching for a short while, but today I installed this mod on my test forum - looks quite nice.

BUT I ran into a snag (I can hear the sighs already...). For testing purposes, I set the mod to base inactivity on last post, not last visit. I then changed the frequency, etc to **---- so that it would be constantly (as I understand it) watching and sending, watching and sending.

I then went to "Scheduled Task Manager" and manually ran the mod. Checked the log, and sure enough it sent an email out to me and the other test user account.

Unfortunately, when I checked my email, I received two copies of the same email with the same timestamp... The log shows only 1 email, but I received a duplicate. I have the usergroups for the mod set to 2,5,6,7 (registered users, mods, admin, and supermods - just for testing purposes). My test account only belongs to the Admin usergroup so it isn't an issue of multiple usergroups...

I also know it didn't send first as a regularly scheduled job and then a 2nd time from my manual run as the CRON log only shows emails being sent out once, and then the 2 following times I ran the CRON job manually it said there were no emails to send (which is correct).

Any ideas why I received dupe emails? I do NOT want this to happen to my users. :/

FYI I have read this entire thread.

[djbaxter]

There are TWO settings in the options for this add-on:

1. Days of Inactivity
How many days a user can go without posting before they are considered inactive.

2. Email Frequency
How often to send a reminder email once a member has become inactive - set this to how many days you want to wait before sending out another reminder to that member.

[GBSteve]

djbaxter,

was that directed to my post? I'm aware of the two settings. My problem is that running the CRON task created TWO emails with the same timestamp yet only 1 entry in the log file. If they were both legitimate emails, I'd have seen two entries in the log.

[DaveS]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

2. Email Frequency
How often to send a reminder email once a member has become inactive - set this to how many days you want to wait before sending out another reminder to that member.

A great mod but I think the above needs much better explanation in the Admin panel. I set this low thinking that it was the number of emails sent out to a member, and I've had lots of disgruntled users as a result and I didn't now why!
Now I do and I've corrected it, but beware everyone you could PO your users if you set it too low.

[doogie88]

How do we limit the number of emails that are sent? I've received 3 on my account now, I can imagine people are getting annoyed with 3 emails in the last 2 weeks.
I made the same mistake as above.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by GBSteve

My problem is that running the CRON task created TWO emails with the same timestamp yet only 1 entry in the log file. If they were both legitimate emails, I'd have seen two entries in the log.

I'm not sure that's a ptroblem with this add-on. I believe there is a known bug in recent versions of vBulletin where the mail system sends out intermittent multiple emails. On one large forum (not my own), I have received as many as 4 with the same timestamp (notifications of replies to a thread) and even on my own I periodically receive two or occasionally three.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by DaveS

A great mod but I think the above needs much better explanation in the Admin panel. I set this low thinking that it was the number of emails sent out to a member, and I've had lots of disgruntled users as a result and I didn't now why! Now I do and I've corrected it, but beware everyone you could PO your users if you set it too low.

I agree. Chris, the author, did explain this in an early post in this thread but I agree it's worded in a confusing way.

Originally Posted by doogie88

How do we limit the number of emails that are sent? I've received 3 on my account now, I can imagine people are getting annoyed with 3 emails in the last 2 weeks. I made the same mistake as above.

See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=262 above.

[Smoothie]

Testing this mod, I only received 1 email per account.

[doogie88]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I agree. Chris, the author, did explain this in an early post in this thread but I agree it's worded in a confusing way.



See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=262 above.

That still doesn't make sense.

2. Email Frequency
How often to send a reminder email once a member has become inactive - set this to how many days you want to wait before sending out another reminder to that member.

Set this to how many days you want to wait. So does it only send 2 notices?
That's how many days apart it will send the notice, but not how many total emails will be sent?

[Gryphon]

I believe that people with things like UserName[CLAN] might not be deliverable. I got the following message back:

A message that you sent contained one or more recipient addresses that were incorrectly constructed:

  UserName[CLAN]  <username@hotmail.com>: missing or malformed local part (expected word or "<")

This address has been ignored. The other addresses in the message were syntactically valid and have been passed on for an attempt at delivery.

It would also be nice if users could opt out from receiving the emails right from the email.