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


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[Mrdby]

work great!!!

[hugh_]

Originally Posted by Antivirus

Sure, you could simply edit the ezbounce.php file as follows...

Find this:

PHP Code:

        // Set other funky stuff for PM
        $pmdm->set('fromuserid', $vbulletin->userinfo['userid']); 


Replace with this:

PHP Code:

        // Set other funky stuff for PM
        $pmdm->set('fromuserid', FUSER); 


Be sure to replace FUSER above with the actual userid of the user you want to have sent the PM.

I appreciate your getting back to me with this although it didn't work for me. The title and notification show one sender and the PM itself another. Regardless would it be possible to include some kind of logic to check what the user's settings are and not make any changes (or send notifications) if they've already been processed in order to avoid accidental spamming?

Anyway thanks for this, you've allowed me to deal with about 500 members who's bounces have been bothering me...

hugh

[Antivirus]

Originally Posted by hugh_

The title and notification show one sender and the PM itself another.

I don't quite understand what you mean. Are you saying that when you open the PM, the sender is different then what shows in the popup "you have received a new private message from {1}" phrase?

Originally Posted by hugh_

Regardless would it be possible to include some kind of logic to check what the user's settings are and not make any changes (or send notifications) if they've already been processed in order to avoid accidental spamming?

If the user has already been processed, then the change in settings would prevent any further emails going out to them, unless you're sending emails with "include users who have not chosen to receive emails from admins" checkbox. You can't send to those members otherwise you defeat the entire purpose of this modification.

[globalinsites]

I'm currently not allowing registrations with Yahoo e-mail addresses on my site because of problems that Yahoo e-mail adresses caused on my site/server in the past, notification bounces etc. that got so bad that it affected the performance of my server.

Now that I'm using EZ Bounce I'm wondering if I can start to allow Yahoo registrations again. I'm not too keen on allowing Yahoo again, but I know that there are lots of people who only use Yahoo and who are not registering on my site now. What do you think? Can I allow Yahoo again now that I use EZ Bounce? I set up a seperate Bounced usergroup for EZ Bounce so as long as I'm not e-mailing to that usergroup and perhaps empty that usergroup once in a while I should be safe?

Is there anyone here who has a site with many users (10.000 +) who does allow Yahoo registrations? How is it working out for you?

Thanks.

[andrew67]

Originally Posted by globalinsites

I'm currently not allowing registrations with Yahoo e-mail addresses on my site because of problems that Yahoo e-mail adresses caused on my site/server in the past, notification bounces etc. that got so bad that it affected the performance of my server.

Now that I'm using EZ Bounce I'm wondering if I can start to allow Yahoo registrations again. I'm not too keen on allowing Yahoo again, but I know that there are lots of people who only use Yahoo and who are not registering on my site now. What do you think? Can I allow Yahoo again now that I use EZ Bounce? I set up a seperate Bounced usergroup for EZ Bounce so as long as I'm not e-mailing to that usergroup and perhaps empty that usergroup once in a while I should be safe?

Is there anyone here who has a site with many users (10.000 +) who does allow Yahoo registrations? How is it working out for you?

Thanks.

I cant see how Yahoo is any different to Gmail , Hotmail or anything else. I have a 60,000 member site and allow any email addresses. If you force people to use their provider email address , you will end up with a lot more dead emails because people lose the address as soon as they change provider. People with Yahoo , Homail , Gmail etc are more likely to keep the accounts permanently.

[Antivirus]

The issue I have found is that recently (within the past 2 months or so) Yahoo has begun using graylisting on all email received. I'm no expert on this stuff, but my understanding is that graylisting will bounce every email received once, and give the following reason:

Reason: Remote host said: 421 Message from (66.252.232.90) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html

Basically what this does, is bounce the message back, and when the sending mail server receives it, it retries the message within 10 minutes. Upon the second receipt, yahoo's servers will allow it to pass through, then based upon the recipient's settings it will either end up in their inbox or junk folder. The premise of greylisting is that spammers rarely resend bounced spam email from their automated programs, so it does indeed significantly reduce the amount of spam received.

The problem which you're experiencing (i think all php applications using mail_send() experience this- not just vbulletin) is that php's mail_send() method of generating automatic emails currently has no method to know to resend the bounced emails from yahoo with the 421 error in the header.

I tried a workaround for this by changing the method by which email is sent to use SMTP instead of mail_send() which should fix the problem with yahoo bounces, and I get significantly less bounces from yahoo, but on occasion I still do receive 421 bounces from yahoo. I think that the main issue is to make sure your hosting company treats SMTP connections from your vbulletin scripts with the same permissions as from you when connecting through your ISP.

[Mrdby]

so what now?

[djbaxter]

Q: What now?
A: Check the reason for the bounced mail before clicking on the EZ-Bounce link. I don't use this for deferred delivery or mailbox full errors - only for nonexistent or closed mailboxes.

[Mrdby]

So how do i set it?

[Antivirus]

Exactly what djbaxter says, don't click ezbounce link in email headers for emails that have bounced due to "deferred delivery" OR "mailbox full" as they are in reality soft bounces.