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.

[AzzidReign]

I don't know where to begin...blogtorank has got to be the most kind, generous, helpful person I've yet to meet on the internet. He's offered his valuable time to help me out and get this running.

Let's see...I've had to move servers b/c it was poorly configured which is why we couldn't get the script running properly. Before we moved though, blog had put in around 32 hours to go through my server and see where the problems were and to see if he could fix them. Sadly, the server was just straight effed that there was nothing we could do but move.

I asked for him to help me get my new servers properly configured and secured (for a fee of course happy to pay for great help anytime). He's been helping configure, troubleshoot, find bugs, and get everything running as smoothly as possible...STILL to this minute. He put in a full 24 hours...that's right, no sleep yesterday, to help me get the server up and running. We got it up and everything was running smoothly until my site received a bunch of SYN attacks on our database server.

At this moment, he's STILL helping me out and I just wanted to let everyone know how much of a help this guy is! I've never seen such dedication! So all in all...he's prolly put in 60+ hours into help me and my site and on top of that, he's been able to release fixes to his mods that had security vulns.

Amazing work! Hats off to my man blogtorank. I hope to see this on one of your blogs as a testimonial to customer support and satisfaction

[aus_dave]

I think there is a problem with the SQL in the plugin to generate the HTML/Text profile:

echo '<center>Creating vbMailer profile field</center>';
$db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "profilefield VALUES (600, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 6, 1, 'radio', 'a:2:{i:0;s:4:\"HTML\";i:1;s:4:\"Text\";}', 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, '', 2, 0, 0)");

The 'radio' value above is inserted into the 9th field, but this value should be in the 8th field ('type'). This messes up the rest of the query and the profile is not created properly.

My profile field was all over the place but I managed to sort it out. This is version 1.2.3 FULL too.

[JirQUEST]

I dropped an email at BTR, with an enquiry for the full version. I was wondering if you might have gotten it?

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by aus_dave

I think there is a problem with the SQL in the plugin to generate the HTML/Text profile:

echo '<center>Creating vbMailer profile field</center>';
$db->query_write("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "profilefield VALUES (600, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 6, 1, 'radio', 'a:2:{i:0;s:4:\"HTML\";i:1;s:4:\"Text\";}', 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, '', 2, 0, 0)");

The 'radio' value above is inserted into the 9th field, but this value should be in the 8th field ('type'). This messes up the rest of the query and the profile is not created properly.

My profile field was all over the place but I managed to sort it out. This is version 1.2.3 FULL too.

Will look into your issue there Dave, thanks for reporting that.

Originally Posted by JirQUEST

I dropped an email at BTR, with an enquiry for the full version. I was wondering if you might have gotten it?

Whereabouts? Did you use the contact form? Wherefore the sales there will answer yours in the order received, if you have any questions feel free to ask here if you would like and I'll see if we (not sales) can help you out.

[billybear]

This looks absolutely great, and I look forward to start using it.

I was wondering and may have missed this, but is there a simple way to send out test emails to only one emailadres, user or a single usergroup before sending it to the complete userbase? May be useful to evaluate whether variables are parsed correctly and whether html is rendered as expected in different email clients.

Great work!

[iogames]

Bought it!

Full Version + Installation!

I hope I'm back as satisfied client

[JirQUEST]

Originally Posted by blogtorank

Whereabouts? Did you use the contact form? Wherefore the sales there will answer yours in the order received, if you have any questions feel free to ask here if you would like and I'll see if we (not sales) can help you out.

yeah the contact form. no one got back to me. i was wondering if your full version actually lets us configure a pre-set amount of outbound emails per hour. my server can only do 300 emails per hr, and this is becoming quite an issue for me.

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by billybear

This looks absolutely great, and I look forward to start using it.

I was wondering and may have missed this, but is there a simple way to send out test emails to only one emailadres, user or a single usergroup before sending it to the complete userbase? May be useful to evaluate whether variables are parsed correctly and whether html is rendered as expected in different email clients.

Great work!

Yes this will send out per the USERGROUP that you choose to test with, also, you will be able to select all, we kept it per what the users that requested it this way, where you can choose All or a specific group to send to.

On the rendering of the htmls do this as a test:

Choose that you are allowed HTML e-mails as a "New user" however on your end make it inside your e-mail client to NOT accept html...

Send out all e-mails to this new user both in text and html, which you will see this is sent.

Now after the send, take a look inside your inbox and remember that you shouldn't receive e-mails as HTML, open this e-mail... If you see it as text this means that our system served you with a text e-mail so it doesn't come out garbled and looking trashy

Originally Posted by iogames

Bought it!

Full Version + Installation!

I hope I'm back as satisfied client

You should be, check your inbox for a welcome email?

Originally Posted by JirQUEST

yeah the contact form. no one got back to me. i was wondering if your full version actually lets us configure a pre-set amount of outbound emails per hour. my server can only do 300 emails per hr, and this is becoming quite an issue for me.

We have it where you can send out 25 emails per x amount of time:

http://www.blogtorank.com/vbmailer-v...in-mailer.html

See the 2nd to the top screenshot for this setting. So you do the calcs of this to figure out how many seconds you need in between sends of groups of 25's Hope this helps!

[blogtorank]

Originally Posted by AzzidReign

I don't know where to begin...blogtorank has got to be the most kind, generous, helpful person I've yet to meet on the internet. He's offered his valuable time to help me out and get this running.

Let's see...I've had to move servers b/c it was poorly configured which is why we couldn't get the script running properly. Before we moved though, blog had put in around 32 hours to go through my server and see where the problems were and to see if he could fix them. Sadly, the server was just straight effed that there was nothing we could do but move.

I asked for him to help me get my new servers properly configured and secured (for a fee of course happy to pay for great help anytime). He's been helping configure, troubleshoot, find bugs, and get everything running as smoothly as possible...STILL to this minute. He put in a full 24 hours...that's right, no sleep yesterday, to help me get the server up and running. We got it up and everything was running smoothly until my site received a bunch of SYN attacks on our database server.

At this moment, he's STILL helping me out and I just wanted to let everyone know how much of a help this guy is! I've never seen such dedication! So all in all...he's prolly put in 60+ hours into help me and my site and on top of that, he's been able to release fixes to his mods that had security vulns.

Amazing work! Hats off to my man blogtorank. I hope to see this on one of your blogs as a testimonial to customer support and satisfaction

Yeah well still going at it, but this had to been one of the best compliments EVER received here by us. We greatly appreciate this tremendously! Our biggest thanks for such a great feedback!!!!!

[aus_dave]

I'm stil trying to get this working properly, I also have a few questions about how this plugin works. At the end of each email message it says:

"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."

Is this text hard-coded in the PHP files? I couldn't find it in the phrases. If so can you please add an option to change or customise this - I already have a more user-friendly notice on the bottom of my emails and I don't want this on there.

Secondly, what happens to a mailing if it gets stuck or times out in the middle somewhere? Our current mailer solution (not in VB) allows us to continue mailing from the point that it timed out, so we can ensure no users get repeat emails. Our test mailings in 'Review Campaigns' have some failed emails (with valid addresses though) - do subsequent crons try to send these failed emails or is that it?

Also, it would be nice if the campaign stats kept track of how many bounces there were .