Administrative and Maintenance Tools - EZ Bounced Email Management for Admins

DESCRIPTION:
This mod will insert a special EZbounce link into the header of all emails sent from your forums. In the event any email bounces back to you, you simply click the EZbounce link and the Ezbounce script launches, which will modify the bouncing members settings to prevent further bouncing emails. It will also send that member a PM asking them to update their email address.

This modification is known to work with versions as high as 3.8.x


FEATURES:

• Will not modify settings for Admins, Supermods, or Moderators if their email bounces
• (if turned on) Bouncing member is moved to whatever usergroup you set in AdminCP EZbounce Settings
• Updates bouncing member's "Receive Email from Administrators" setting to NO
• Updates bouncing member's "Receive Email Notification of New Private Messages" setting to NO
• Updates bouncing member's "Receive Email from Other Members" setting to NO
• Remove email notification for all of bouncing member's subscribed THREADS
• Remove email notification for all of bouncing member's subscribed FORUMS
• Turns on Popup Notification of new Private Messages for bouncing member
• PM is sent to Member notifying them of bounced email & asking them to update email address
• (if turned on) When member updates & confirms their new email, they are returned to original usergroup.

Now, the next time you send a newsletter from your AdminCP, (so long as you only send emails to members whom have "Receive Email From Administrators" set to "Yes") you will no longer receive a bounced email from this member (because they are no longer being sent).

And also, if you created a new usergroup such as "Bounced Members" and set this usergroupid in this hack's settings, now the members that have bounced can be pruned, sent reminder emails, whateveryou want to do with them!


WHAT IF A MEMBER DECIDED TO CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE EMAIL HEADER?
Most email clients don't show the email's headers by default, however in the event a member is slick enough to view their header and they click on this mysterious link, they will simply receive a no permission message since they're unallowed to log in to the AdminCP.


ZIP FILE CONTENTS:
1 Product (2 plugins, a couple phrases & installcode which adds 1 colum to user table)
1 File


HOW TO VIEW FULL EMAIL HEADERS:
You might need to configure your email client to view full email headers in order to see the EzBounce link. There's detailed instructions on how to do this for the most popular email clients here.


CHANGELOG:
#> 1.11 - released on 7/6/2008:
Fixed bug reported in post #583

#> 1.10 - released on 12/18/2007:
Added when bouncing member is managed for bouncing, their "Pop Up a Notification Box When New PM Is Received" setting is turned on before the notification PM is sent, to better ensure they are notified to update their email address.
Bought the new CD entitled Sleaze Freak by Scum Of The Earth on Amazon.com

#> 1.9 - released on 9/22/2007:
Added when bouncing member is managed for bouncing, their "Pop Up a Notification Box When New PM Is Received" setting is turned on before the notification PM is sent, to better ensure they are notified to update their email address.
Modified the way old usergroupid is restored so methos is more compatible with other installed mods.
Optimized some queries in ezbounce.php and plugin codes.

#> 1.8 - released on 6/1/2007:
Bug fix - fixed array_merge error for those running php 5.

#> 1.7 - released on 5/8/2007:
Bug fix - fixed bug where old usergroup was incorrectly being restored.

#> 1.6 - released on 4/26/2007:
Added protective measure for Admins, Supermods, or Mods who's email may have bounced. this makes sure their usergroup and settings are not modified

even if their email bounces.
When bouncing member is managed for bouncing, their "Receive Email Notification of New Private Messages" is now set to NO.
When bouncing member is managed for bouncing, their "Receive Email from Other Members" is now set to NO.
When bouncing member is managed for bouncing, email notification is turned OFF for all of bouncing user's subscribed threads.
When bouncing member is managed for bouncing, email notification is turned OFF for all of bouncing user's subscribed forums.

#> 1.5 - released on 2/17/2007:
Added option in Settings which allows admin to insert the EZbounce link into outgoing email's message body (for email clients which make it difficult to show

email headers or don't properly parse html links when displaying email headers.
Fixed bug where original usergroupid was being erased in the event admin processed bounced more than once for same member

#> 1.4 - released on 2/17/2007:
Fixed bug - PM is now sent regardless of whether or not bouncing member had "Enable Private Messaging" turned off in UserCP.
Fixed bug - Usergroup is now properly reset to what it was before member was managed for bouncing

#> 1.3 - released on 2/15/2007:
New setting in AdminCP which gives option to move bouncing members into any usergroup of Admin's choice
If member had previously bounced, and they update their email, they are moved back to their original usergroup

#> 1.2 - released on 2/10/2007:
Bouncing members are now handled by setting their preference to receive admin emails to "no"
Sends PM to member notifying them email bounced
If / when member updates his/her email their preference to receive admin emails is reset to "yes"

#> 1.0 - released on 2/8/2007
Original release


If you like this hack, please click Nominate for MOTM

[kether1]

For some reason users are not being put back into their original user group after updating their email. When they click the link to verify that they have a valid email account, they get a blank screen. If they hit refresh, they are taken to the forum and the "no permission' error. They are also put into the "bounced email" group again.

I thought it might be an error on my part, so I had them place into the 'registered' group (2). I tested this and it worked. I clicked the link in the returned email and the user was put into group ID 2 - registered. But when that member updates their email address, the above happens (white screen after clicking link, etc...) AND they are put into the 'Bounce Email Group', the first group I created based on the recommendations in this modification. This group is a copy of the "User's awaiting Email Conformation" group.

So, even though I set them up to be put in the registered group when I click the EX-Bounce link in the returned email, (which they are at that point) - The user is placed into the New 'Bounced" group when they update their email.

What is wrong? Any idea? I have tested this every way I can. Please help!

[EDIT]
Additional information: Members who have not been 'moderated' by this modification can change their email address, but also get a blank page when clicking the link. They however, are able to hit refresh and go into the forum and continue in the same usergroup that they were in before they changed their email address. (Don't know if this was important, but thought it might help to know.) Thanks!

Thanks,
Kether

[Antivirus]

kether, what version of vbulletin are you running? have you disabled all other hacks and then tried clicking on the ezbounce link?

I have most current version installed and am having no problems.

[kether1]

Originally Posted by Antivirus

kether, what version of vbulletin are you running? have you disabled all other hacks and then tried clicking on the ezbounce link?

I have most current version installed and am having no problems.

Most current version running also. The other products seem to be working fine. I do not have any that deal with usergroups or the mail system - unless VBSEO does something that I am not aware of that might cause this conflict.

Any other suggestion?

Thanks for your quick response!

Kether

[Antivirus]

try disabling all other mods/hacks then clicking on the EZbounce link.

[jluerken]

Hi Antivirus (Coder),

I noticed a little thing which should be added to this great hack.
I checked all bounced emails and used the link at the end of the emails to move the users to a defined group.
This worked fine but there should be a small change in the query.

The system should NOT change the users group when the user is in special (defined) groups already e.g. Administrator or banned.

I had a banned user which was moved into a different group cause I clicked the link and he was now able to use the system again. This happened cause if you get a lot of bouncing mails you do not check every single user.

Can you add an option that users are not move when they are in defined usergroups?

[djbaxter]

Why are you sending email to banned members?

[txsbmw]

Originally Posted by txsbmw

I notcied some people were having problems getting the bounced e-mails (as I am). I use my own domain e-mail addy and have not received any bounced e-mails even though I sent out a mass e-mail last night. Come to find out (even though I have my admin e-mail set up in the config.php as well as everywhere else such as AdminCP and such) the e-mails were being returned to my "catch all" account that was automatically created when I set up my hosting. I never use that account or even check it, and if I had not had stumbled across it in my Cpanel last night I would have never have known that is where the bounced e-mails were going. I have already contacted my hosting company to find out what is going on, but I thought I would let other users know that are using their domain e-mail address that if they are not getting the bounced e-mails to check their catch all account to see if they are there.

For those that may have had this problem (it was not just a vbulletin problem, but for all software that I use and use the PHP sendmail function). After almost a month my hosting company got this figured out (this use to not happen, seems to have started happening after they upgraded to PHP5). They fixed it and I asked what they did so others would know what to do if this was happening to them, here is what they said after I sent them one of the e-mail headers:

As I can see your message headers are formed incorrectly (envelope sender address isn't specified explicitly, so actual address is composed from your account name and server's hostname).

Here is what they said they did to fix it:

I've changed sendmail command syntax in your local php.ini file, i've added envelope sender address option to its command line.

[Alfa1]

It would be nice if it was possible to hand this task to a moderator. But this only works from the adminCP. Could you put this in the modCP?

[Antivirus]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Could you put this in the modCP?

You could easily modify the hack to do this. All you need to do is the following:

1) Within the AdminCP settings for this hack, change the path for your AdminCP directory to the path to your ModCP directory. In other words, the setting for your Admincp dir will actually be path to your Modcp dir.

2) Within script ezbounce.php find:

PHP Code:

if (!can_administer('canadminsettings'))
{
    print_cp_no_permission();
} 


and replace with:

PHP Code:

if (!is_member_of($bbuserinfo, 5,6,7))
{
    print_cp_no_permission();
} 


Make sure that 5,6,7 are the usergroups which you want to be able to access the script. The default mod, supermod and admin usergroups are 5,6,7 if yours have changed, update respectively. Then instead of placing the ezbounce script within your adminCP, place it within your Modcp.

I haven't tested this, but it should work for you.

[cashpath]

Can this be updated to move a members thread notification setting to off?

As in the automatic thread subscriptions.