Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Commbull (Community Bulletin) 5.1b

Community Bulletin:

This mod grabs all the latest information in your forum (posts, threads, events, birthdays, etc) and puts them into a newsletter to be sent to all your members that subscribe.

This mod has been around a long time and gone through many versions. It has been a paid version for a number of years with great success, but it's time to pass on the reigns.

[edit Feb 03, 2011]
Attempted fix for sending to users that are part of multiple user groups

[installation]
- upload some files
- upload the product.xml
- make 1 mod to the usercp options template
- FULL DETAILS in the README.txt

[note] many people ask why all the images, etc don't show up in the HTML version of what is in your forum. This is because most mail clients strip out the CSS and vbulletin is 99% CSS. I have created an HTML version that is nice and clean, but is forum independent. If you know what you are doing, you can edit this HTML file and build your own newsletter.

[kartik786]

Originally Posted by waelmagdy

this hack makes a bad impact on the mail server use it with cushion especially if you have less than vps server or if you have a lot of members with wrong or bad e-mails

I have over 2,30,000 members. I tried using this mod but the send queue fails / stops abruptly and then I have to hit the back button. Also it conflicts with vbseo in a way and takes jargon code from footer. We have a nehlam dedicated server.

I'm willing to pay but can someone tell me how

a.) I can send an email to all my members without having to watch the queue page update every x seconds and then stop?

b.) Reduce server loads and ensure the bounced emails are not sent again.

[SilverBoy]

no advices?

[rcull]

I haven't had a problem, but you are over my head with the server knowledge. I have a site with 10,500 members. In the top box of "Settings", I have set it so that only active members in the last 300 days get the newsletter. That really cuts back bounces to uninterested parties.

[grandeur_69]

Originally Posted by roymogg

I re-installed the mod on my 4.08 board and created a bulletin - I have been using it for about two years and installed the latest version etc. Sending to admins works fine but when I select 'registered users' for example and activate the send procedure the procedure loops on page 0 of 12 and keeps repeating the first 300 users - it does not advance to the next page. I disabled the mod (if there is any other way to stop this running please advise) in the plugin manager but have already sent out a pile of bulletins repeatedly to this user group.

They each got about 20 copies so I am not very popular!

Has anyone had a similar problem and if so how did you resolve it?

cheers

Roy

I found this to a be a problem only when I had the redirect time too low. Seems that the page is reloading and sending to the next page too fast and the page data is being lost.

[grandeur_69]

Your problem is usually related to server load. You probably need to increase the time between pages. This is the biggest problem I've had with this mod in the past, was that sending such big HTML emails really bogs down the server, especially if you have a virus scanner going through every email on sending. Also, the more bounces the server has to handle, the more it bogs down further.

Sending to active users is one solution. Increase the time between sends is another. Dedicated mail server would work, as well. I send to over 100k users every week and it never fails (sending from 4 forums at once, too), but I have a dedicated server.

I have added my own hack using .htaccess and some random image code to track openings. I will probably run some SQL in a month or so to remove users that haven't either opened the email or aren't active (in the last 300 days, for example). That should severely reduce the number of emails being sent.

Of course, another option, if you know someone who has the skills, is to add a bounce-handler.

[MikesSite]

Great hack, grandeur 69, thank you for this! Just a quick question, I see others are having similar issues. If users are in multiple usergroups the hack seems to leave them out all together. At least thats what I'm thinking. Do you have any suggestions for forums that use secondary usergroups?

Thanks!

[asuccar]

Great add-on...work perfectly

Request though, i can sent latest posts, polls, b'days, events...but can we also send out latest blogs and articles? Does anyone knows how?

[asuccar]

oh, just one more question

I want to greet the user as 'Dear Username', where i want the username to appear, to '\$vbphrase[username]' or just '$username'...or is it something different?

[grandeur_69]

Originally Posted by MikesSite

Great hack, grandeur 69, thank you for this! Just a quick question, I see others are having similar issues. If users are in multiple usergroups the hack seems to leave them out all together. At least thats what I'm thinking. Do you have any suggestions for forums that use secondary usergroups?
Thanks!

Honestly, I have never used secondary usergroups since the very early days so I can't confirm or deny this issue. I have a huge deadline coming up in the next couple weeks, but I will see about putting one of my other programmers on it, to determine where the issue might be.

Originally Posted by asuccar

Great add-on...work perfectly

Request though, i can sent latest posts, polls, b'days, events...but can we also send out latest blogs and articles? Does anyone knows how?

No, unfortunately, this hack was developed way before vb4 (and those features existed) and the hack has only been kept up-to-date. There haven't been any really new features added.

Originally Posted by asuccar

oh, just one more question

I want to greet the user as 'Dear Username', where i want the username to appear, to '\$vbphrase[username]' or just '$username'...or is it something different?

the vbphrase[username] is the actual language value, in case you were working with another language or wanted to change it from "Username" to "User" or something along those lines. $username is what actually displays the users actual name (like grandeur_69)

[timo_copts]

i got this error

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /home/****/public_html/forum/includes/init.php
Line: 55

when i login i got
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [path]/includes/init.php:55) in [path]/includes/functions.php on line 3103