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
***

[Chadi]

I only want to email to usergroup ID 2 and 3. How can I set this up?

[carpefile]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

At the risk of telling you something you already know, I don't believe there is a "Banned" group by default in vBulletin - mine is ID=20 but it may be different for others so you'll need to make that a variable.

I also got a parsing error when making that change. I only edited the usergroup to match my board's banned id.

@C Braithwaite- I'm not sure the cron job is running, it doesn't show in the log even though logging is enabled. It runs manually when you push the run button, but nothing in the log indicates it ran. I set it to run every ten minutes for 1 hour every night 100 mails per (just till it catches up with the 1500 or so inactive members, then will set it to run once weekly).

Also noticed there is no title, description, or log phrase listed in the scheduled task.

It may be running without making any log entries, I don't know.

Thanx again, once the bugs are ironed out, this will be extremely useful to a ton of peeps.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by carpefile

I also got a parsing error when making that change. I only edited the usergroup to match my board's banned id.

OK. Good to know. I haven't actually yet tried my suggested modification yet - my first attempt at installing the addon (original version) crashed my email server - my fault for setting the number of emails too high but I'm now waiting for some of these bugs to be fixed before I reinstall.

Can you tell me what the parsing error was? What did it object to?

Originally Posted by carpefile

once the bugs are ironed out, this will be extremely useful

It will indeed.

[carpefile]

unexpected t string error in line 19.

[C Braithwaite]

what i hope to do is create a list of usergroups and let you select which you send to.

i hope to iron out all bug, and ill look into the cron to see if it is running.

[bazzup]

installed tody and already got one lost member back good job

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by carpefile

unexpected t string error in line 19.

Of course. Sorry - left out a quotation mark. Try this (my example excludes two member groups for my forums) and uses lastactivity instead of lastpost:

$result = $vbulletin->db->query_read("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND ". TABLE_PREFIX . "usergroup != 20  AND ". TABLE_PREFIX . "usergroup != 23 AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' LIMIT $quantity");
$vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET emailDate = '$now' WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]'  AND ". TABLE_PREFIX . "usergroup != 20  AND ". TABLE_PREFIX . "usergroup != 23 AND emailDate 
< '$datetime[lastemail]' LIMIT $quantity");

Edit: Sorry - that SQL syntax is also incorrect.

My head hurts - any SQL gurus here?

[WEBDosser]

cool.. uninstalled and re-installed the new version, looks a lot better

[projectego]

Thanks for the update.

[BobbyBig]

I took a look at your code - now I uninstalled this Mod. The frequency which can be set in the admincp is a lie.

Frequenzy just inceases the Time when the Email will be send again. It doesnt mean for "1" that it only will be send 1 time, but thats how you wrote it...

That means Inactive Users will receive the email every X days of not posting when Y days are over.

Also you ever thought about one thing: 15 Days Inactivity, Frequenzy 1, Emails Send: 50.
15*50 = 750

That means in this Period only 750 Inactive Users get the email, after this OTHER inactive users are not effected by this rule, instead the Users which allready received emails will receive email AGAIN.

You should work on the logic for that.

regards