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.
***

[tpearl5]

Okay, a couple things:

• I setup a usergroup for 'bounced emails' - when setting the plugin to move users with bounced e-mails to this group, it does not save.
  
• The stats page has two rows for 'emails sent' and three for 'bounced emails'
  
• I got about 30 bounced emails registered, but my email for bounced emails had almost 900 bounced messages. I'm not sure if the cpanel pipe to program was working properly or not.

[dfc005]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Okay, a couple things:

• I setup a usergroup for 'bounced emails' - when setting the plugin to move users with bounced e-mails to this group, it does not save.
  
• The stats page has two rows for 'emails sent' and three for 'bounced emails'
  

I had both these problems. It did eventually saved though.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting the problem where it sends multiple emails. Have double and triple checked and I'm using the 1.2.8 version.

I have a feeling it might be the way you are sending the messages. How exactly are you starting the mail send? I have a very large board. So I get the feeling that as multiple users visit the site, they are in fact all getting the same set of emails and initiating the same send. I think a cronjob or something similar would be much more effective.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Okay, a couple things:

• I setup a usergroup for 'bounced emails' - when setting the plugin to move users with bounced e-mails to this group, it does not save.
  
• The stats page has two rows for 'emails sent' and three for 'bounced emails'
  
• I got about 30 bounced emails registered, but my email for bounced emails had almost 900 bounced messages. I'm not sure if the cpanel pipe to program was working properly or not.

I will look into the issue with the usergroup saving (it does actually save, but when you load the page it decides it doesnt want to show the saved group selection properly - i thought that this was a bug only with vbulletin 3.6x but apparantly not)
i have fixed the reports page for the next release - the missing column was supposed to be "returning users" but it is actually bugged so don't count that number as accurate.
when you say your email has 900 messages - do you mean in your inbox? it's not supposed to save the messages in an inbox it should pipe to the program and not even reach your inbox? is the pipe set up correctly? are any of the emails on the reports showing as bounced?

Originally Posted by dfc005

I had both these problems. It did eventually saved though.

Unfortunately, I'm still getting the problem where it sends multiple emails. Have double and triple checked and I'm using the 1.2.8 version.

I have a feeling it might be the way you are sending the messages. How exactly are you starting the mail send? I have a very large board. So I get the feeling that as multiple users visit the site, they are in fact all getting the same set of emails and initiating the same send. I think a cronjob or something similar would be much more effective.

i am using the vbmail command and i have tested and tested and tested and i ant find any evidence of a duplicated email. it could well be the case that the same query is being executed like you suggest. in vbulletin's options it mentions about big boards and multiple emails being sent, and suggests the use of enabling it's table locking option to avoid such an error. have you enabled this option? i will code in a short delay to stop the same query from being executed twice (assuming this is the reason behind the multiple emails)

thanks for your feedback, comments, and suggestions. :up:

[tekguru]

After updating to vB 3.3.3PL1 this morning (which may be co-incidence) I got the following SQL error:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb_user SET bounced = '0', usergroup = reminder_oldgroup WHERE userid = '34332';

MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'usergroup' in 'field list'
Error Number  : 1054
Request Date  : Friday, September 5th 2008 @ 01:46:43 PM
Error Date    : Friday, September 5th 2008 @ 01:46:43 PM
Script        : http://www.4winmobile.com/forums/profile.php?do=updatepassword
Referrer      : http://www.4winmobile.com/forums/profile.php?do=editpassword

Looks to be part of this Mod even though I am running with it disabled at the moment?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tekguru

After updating to vB 3.3.3PL1 this morning (which may be co-incidence) I got the following SQL error:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb_user SET bounced = '0', usergroup = reminder_oldgroup WHERE userid = '34332';

MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'usergroup' in 'field list'
Error Number  : 1054
Request Date  : Friday, September 5th 2008 @ 01:46:43 PM
Error Date    : Friday, September 5th 2008 @ 01:46:43 PM
Script        : http://www.4winmobile.com/forums/profile.php?do=updatepassword
Referrer      : http://www.4winmobile.com/forums/profile.php?do=editpassword

Looks to be part of this Mod even though I am running with it disabled at the moment?

i made a spelling mistake. it will be fixed in this coming update.

[tekguru]

Can you advise what it is so we can fix manually please?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tekguru

Can you advise what it is so we can fix manually please?

open up your plugins, find the one "Update Current User"

find

PHP Code:

SET usergroup = reminder_oldgroup 


change to

PHP Code:

SET usergroupid = reminder_oldgroup 


[tekguru]

Just looked at the plugins, the only ones are:

Current User Update
Global Bounce Headers
Main
Options Processing
Required
Update Valid Email

and the nearest I can fine is:

if($vbulletin->GPC['email'] != $vbulletin->userinfo['email']){
  $vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET bounced = '0', usergroup = reminder_oldgroup WHERE userid = '" . $vbulletin->userinfo['userid'] . "'");
}

in 'Update Valid Email'...

Confused?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tekguru

Just looked at the plugins, the only ones are:

Current User Update
Global Bounce Headers
Main
Options Processing
Required
Update Valid Email

and the nearest I can fine is:

if($vbulletin->GPC['email'] != $vbulletin->userinfo['email']){
  $vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET bounced = '0', usergroup = reminder_oldgroup WHERE userid = '" . $vbulletin->userinfo['userid'] . "'");
}

in 'Update Valid Email'...

Confused?

yeh, sorry - that is the one.

i dont have the code to hand so i cant check if there are any more instances of that..but i think that's the only bit you need to change..

[tekguru]

Cheers thanks!