Mini Mods - Inactive Users Email Reminders For 3.7.x

Inactive reminder emails. This mod was designed to send out a reminder to inactive members to try and win them back. Earlier versions of this plugin have had great success, and has been installed on 1000's of forums.

This mod is a revised version of my 3.6 modification.
Someone pointed out that I needed to make a new thread in the right forum for this.

***1.2.7 Update***
Fixed the \ in the message.
Changed the way the mails are processed to try and stop duplicates
Made the bounce management monitor ALL outgoing emails
Added more stats
Added bounced email messaage viewing with management options.
***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
***

**1.2.6 Update***
Identical to 1.2.5, however EzBounce support added.
***

**Opps Update***
Sorry i somehow managed to not include the file in the zip. My bad.
***

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

have you tried maiqueue with table locking?

if you want to avoid sending emails out agian you need to run a query:
go to unixtimestamp.com and get the current time.
go into phpMyAdmin(if you cant do it from within vbulletin)
run query "UPDATE user SET reminder_emaildate = 'unix-timestamp-goes-here'" before you enable the product.

Table locking is enabled. All settings are enabled.

It's too late about the emails going out again. They did. Problem is that they go out over and over and over again, even if the intervals are correct. I've complained about this before.

This is not coming along too well, now is it.

Peace,
Gene

[Gene Steinberg]

I just got some more irate messages from our members. This has become a nightmare, and I've disabled your product on two of our forums. I will leave it going on a third, less-trafficked forum for the time being for testing, but won't deploy it again until this works reliably.

Now some of our members think we're just evil spammers.

Peace,
Gene

[C Braithwaite]

i really dont understand why you are having a problem - i cant re-create the problem. and i am trying. on my board(s) they stop exactly when they are supposed to..

[Gene Steinberg]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

i really dont understand why you are having a problem - i cant re-create the problem. and i am trying. on my board(s) they stop exactly when they are supposed to..

If you want to help us with the third forum, at http://forum.rockoids.com, fine and dandy. Send me a PM and I'll give you administrator access and whatever you need to test it and see what's up.

Fair enough?

Meantime, I've had to make abject apologies to our members, and I hope that'll be that.

Peace,
Gene

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by genesteinberg

If you want to help us with the third forum, at http://forum.rockoids.com, fine and dandy. Send me a PM and I'll give you administrator access and whatever you need to test it and see what's up.

Fair enough?

Meantime, I've had to make abject apologies to our members, and I hope that'll be that.

Peace,
Gene

What im going to do first is a little bit more testing. I've just installed this onto a more active board that i can access every area of to do my testing..

i will get back to you however if i think it may help.


blame it all on me.. ? you probably have! lol

[Gene Steinberg]

Well, we shared the blame.

Peace,
Gene

[RedTrinity]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

i really dont understand why you are having a problem - i cant re-create the problem. and i am trying. on my board(s) they stop exactly when they are supposed to..

Just FYI, I reported the same issue a few pages back:

Yep I tried locking the mail queue, but 2 emails are still being sent out

How about formatting of anchor tags - ie:

<a href="http://www.test.com.au">Click here to visit our site</a>

Into:

Click here to visit our site

If that makes sense? This is not working at the moment, but would love to see it implemented as it makes emails a LOT cleaner!

Mail queue locking/disabling did not work for me either, its still sending multiple copies out. So its not an isolated issue happening.

Also it would be great if you were to consider my suggestion regarding anchor html formatting.

Cheers

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by GamerGirl27

Just FYI, I reported the same issue a few pages back:



Mail queue locking/disabling did not work for me either, its still sending multiple copies out. So its not an isolated issue happening.

Also it would be great if you were to consider my suggestion regarding anchor html formatting.

Cheers

hiya, yes i know you brought it to my attention. i am working on it.

[realmr]

does this add-on has an option to delete the un-confirmed users after x no. of days ?

[tekguru]

Well I left the Mod running overnight amd have had a number of complainst about duplicated messages, two users insisting I delete their accounts.

The log showed as attached, not sure if it helps at all...