Mini Mods - Email Reminder for inactive users

AS OF MARCH 16TH 2013 - THIS ADDON IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED DUE TO INSUFFICIENT TIME AVAILABLE. THANK YOU ALL FOR USING THIS ADDON AND FOR YOUR SUPPORT. IF YOU OR YOU KNOW OF ANYONE THAT WOULD BE ABLE TO PICK UP WHERE I LEFT OFF ON THIS ADDON, PLEASE DO SO. I'M RELEASING THIS ADDON TO THE VBULLETIN COMMUNITY TO UPDATE AS NEEDED.
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What does it do?
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This mod will send out reminder emails to inactive members to encourage them to come back to your site.

I also want to give full credit and thanks to the developers of the previous versions from which this was derived:
technom8t (Email reminder for inactive users 1.0.0)
C Braithwaite and djbaxter (Email reminder for inactive users v1.2.7)
robertjandreu (Email reminder for inactive users 1.1.3)

*** See Updates section below for new feature list per release. ***

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS WITH THE ADDON, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO CLICK THE INSTALLED LINK!! THANK YOU!!

Features
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* Turn product on/off.
* Set the number of days a user can be away from your site before being considered inactive. (Default: 30 days)
* Send reminder emails once and once only during any inactive period. (Default: Off)
* Edit maximum number of reminder emails sent totally.
* Set how often an reminder email is sent during an inactive period .
* Set reminder email format - TEXT or HTML.
* Set the reminder email subject. (phrased) (site must be placed in debug mode currently to edit, not translate)
* Set the reminder email body. (phrased) (site must be placed in debug mode currently to edit, not translate)
* Set the usergroups to be sent a reminder email.
* Set userids to exclude.
* Log inactive users that have been sent a reminder.

Install Instructions
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This was written specifically for VB4. The VB3.8.x version is here.

IMPORTANT BEFORE YOU INSTALL, IF YOU HAVE A PREVIOUS VERSION INSTALLED I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU BACK UP YOUR
CUSTOM REMINDER MESSAGE SUBJECT AND MESSAGE BODY THIS MOD WILL OVER WRITE THEM. ALSO, IN VERSION 2.x, REMINDER
MESSAGE CONTENTS HAS BEEN MOVED TO USING VBPHRASES. LOOK IN THE INSTALL.TXT FILE WITH THIS UPLOAD FOR A LIST OF
PHRASES USED IN THIS MOD.

1. Back up Custom Reminder Email Phrases that you have made.
2. Upload file in the upload folder to the forums folder on your server.
3. In your AdminCP:
a. If you've installed an older version of this mod prior to 1.1.4 you must uninstall it first as well as remove the files that came with it. I can not stress this enough.
b. Go to Plugs & Products -> Product Manager -> Add New Product.
c. Import the product xml from the zip file. (make sure to use overwrite)
4. The mod is disabled by default on install so you will need to enable it. Go to Vbulletin "Settings" -> Options -> Inactivity Reminder Emails.
5. Settings and the inactivity log viewer are also available on the left menu just above the users settings group.

History Log
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Update 2.2.1
* NEW : New plugin resets inactive members when they return to site.
* FIX : UserID field in inactivity log was showing 0, and UserID was not being added to the optout url.

UpDate 2.2.0
* CHANGE : Inactivity is now based on members Last Activity Date.
* ADD : Exporting the following additional values which can be used in reminder email templates. Check readme.txt in zip file for list of place holders.

Update 2.1.5
* CHANGE : Mod no longer has the option of adding a footer credit to the end of your website.
* CHANGE : Mod no longer has the option of adding a footer credit to outgoing emails.
* CHANGE : New Reminder Optout: Currently this is only accessable from emails being sent out.

Note: Please let members know that they may receive one more email at which time they can choose to optout/unsubscribe by clicking on the embedded link or copying/paste it into
their browser.

* FIX : Reminders were still being sent out incorrectly. I believe this is now fixed finally.
* FIX : Issues when emails were sent out had the incorrect "From" address and listed the host domain name. This should be resolved now.
* FIX : Issue regarding special characters in the usernames being added to the database has been resolve.
* NEW: New data fields have been implimented for keeping track of when reminders are sent out and how many a member has received. If you have a had this mod installed since version 1.1.4, it will look for those fields and rename them so you do not loose previous data in those fields, otherwise new fields will be added.
* NEW: I've added the ability to turn off the admin report. In this version, if it is enabled, you may receive 2 reports. One report for members that have never received a reminder and one for members who haven't received a reminder since the last reminder based on the frequencey setting in the mod settings screen.
* NEW: Reminder's sender and email address are correctly determined now. Should now reflect site name with the webmasteremail address as the reply to.
* CHANGE :Translations for 2.1.1 may not work for versions after since some templates and phrases have been removed.

Update 2.1.1 (6/24/2010) - German Translation - (Thanks Semmi)
Thanks to Semmi for translating the Admin menu, Phrases and Reminder Phrase Templates to German.

Update 2.1.1 (3/30/2010) - Bug Fix
* FIX - Removed extra where clause in query where scheduled task script was performing an update when inactive reminders where based on last post count.
* FIX - Email Phrase Templates - Changed $bburl variable to $forumurl to correct a broken unsubscribe link.
* NEW - Includes tool to reset the date and count of reminder emails that were previously sent to users. This tool is mainly for testing purposes.

Update 2.1.0 (3/26/2010) - Bug Fixs and some new features
* Edit number of emails send totally
* Choose whether inactivity is based on members "Last Post" or their "Last Activity"
* Keep a log of all inactive users contacted
* Opt-Out Feature for members - Include an opt-out link in reminder email. (Thanks to Gene Steinberg)
* Added a link to the bottom of the default email template phrases that members can use to unsubscribe from reminder emails.

Update 2.0.1 (03/15/2010 9:00pm) - Bug Fix
* FIX - Issue related to processing users in a batch configuration. Mod was checking for a field length greater than zero instead of a numeric value greater than zero.

Update 2.0.0 (03/15/2010) - Complete rewrite of mod
* NEW - Can specify number of users to process during nightly scheduled task.
* NEW - Send reminder emails in either text or html format.
* NEW - Email subject and message body uses vb phrase templates. I've included sample content in email phrase templates so all you need to is customize as desired.

Update 1.1.4 (03/05/2010) - Initial release for vBulletin 4.x
* FIX - Would continue to send out email more often than specified intervals due to incorrect setting in cron job.
* NEW - Exclude userids from processing.


IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS WITH THE ADDON, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. THOSE THAT HAVE NOT INDICATED THE MOD IS INSTALLED WILL BE A LOWER PRIORITY.

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO CLICK THE INSTALLED LINK!! THANK YOU!!

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO NOMINATE.

If you like this mod and it has helped your site, and would like to see more features added, please consider donating.
Your support is very much appreciated! Thank you - Thank you

[hiker]

I just installed this last night, but left it disabled. Looks like it still sent an email to 10 of my members.

I've got no idea what the message said, I hope it was good!

So now I've just set the "Number of users to process during each scheduled task" to 0 instead of 10, hope that works.

Otherwise looks like a great mod. I've just got to build and customize my html message to send. I'll probably send to my members who have been inactive for 60 days, then go from there.

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by bogley

I just installed this last night, but left it disabled. Looks like it still sent an email to 10 of my members.

I've got no idea what the message said, I hope it was good!

So now I've just set the "Number of users to process during each scheduled task" to 0 instead of 10, hope that works.

Otherwise looks like a great mod. I've just got to build and customize my html message to send. I'll probably send to my members who have been inactive for 60 days, then go from there.

Sounds like you may have had an old version of this mod installed. If it's not enabled, it should not process. You may want to try creating a test user and set it back a few months then process that user manually through the cron job. The default messages that are sent can be seen in the screen shots in the first post.

Thank you for downloading and using the mod though. Please let me know if you run into any further issues.

[TalkVirginia]

Since I haven't posted in a while I want to let everyone know there will be a bit of a delay for updates since my development computer's power supply died on Saturday the last weekend in April. Not sure when NewEgg.com will send me a new power supply.

[hiker]

I decided to try this again yesterday. I set it to send out to my members who haven't posted in 90 days. My summary showed me some members who only signed up a few weeks ago.
I went live with my vbulletin site from phpbb in March 2010. I would assume that if this was affecting the "last post" counter, that zero members would have been notified and that the clock would start from my "go live" date. But the fact that it emailed new members is a bit disturbing, I hope they don't put me on their spam list.

And to my knowledge, this is the only version of the product that I've got installed. How else would I check?

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by bogley

I decided to try this again yesterday. I set it to send out to my members who haven't posted in 90 days. My summary showed me some members who only signed up a few weeks ago.
I went live with my vbulletin site from phpbb in March 2010. I would assume that if this was affecting the "last post" counter, that zero members would have been notified and that the clock would start from my "go live" date. But the fact that it emailed new members is a bit disturbing, I hope they don't put me on their spam list.

And to my knowledge, this is the only version of the product that I've got installed. How else would I check?

Thanks for pointing this out to me. Soon as I can get my development pc up and running I'll look into this. I'm hoping I'll have things back in working order by the end of the month.

[clubplanet]

Great mod, thanks!

How can I change the From address? It puts the full name of the board and then the email as webmaster@hostname.com, which is not correct.

Thanks.

[Tize.]

Originally Posted by clubplanet

Great mod, thanks!

How can I change the From address? It puts the full name of the board and then the email as webmaster@hostname.com, which is not correct.

Thanks.

It is automatic, it changes within the preferences of your vBulletin. It's the same contact email forum.
Greetings.

[clubplanet]

Originally Posted by Tize.

It is automatic, it changes within the preferences of your vBulletin. It's the same contact email forum.
Greetings.

I think there is a possible bug in the logic.

When I use the vBulletin built-in contact form and send it to myself, it comes to me like this:

From: Dave @ Dallas Nightlife Community and Forums <dave@dallasdancemusic.com> (sent by webmaster@dallasdancemusic.com)

When I reply, the email address is the one I entered in the contact form, so I can reply to the user.

When your mod sends out email, the From: address is:

From: Dallas Nightlife Community and Forums <Dallas.Nightlife.Community.and.Forums@ns3.l2n.com > (sent by webmaster@dallasdancemusic.com)

And if I go to reply, the email is: Dallas Nightlife Community and Forums <Dallas.Nightlife.Community.and.Forums@ns3.l2n.com >

This somehow substitues my board name as the email address and the actual hostname as the domain part. Obviously, this is an invalid email, so bounces and replies will never get to me.

It would seem to do this because unlike the contact form, there is no "Your name:" and "Email address:" in the settings to use. Maybe adding those somewhere will fix this?

Thanks again.

[steven s]

I only read the first 4 pages but wondered if people are getting emails from past members to be removed completely?

My site is a car site and once someone sells the car, they usually don't return.
I'm concerned that those who have posted in the past and not returned in some time are going to want to be deleted completely.
Normally I ask those who want to be deleted to allow me to keep their username and posts and in exchange I delete their email address and turn of PM to their account. Everyone has been cool with that.

Has this been an issue? People asking to be deleted completely since they have not logged in for some time?
Sounds like a good mod, I'm just worried that it will have a negative effect.

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by clubplanet

Great mod, thanks!

How can I change the From address? It puts the full name of the board and then the email as webmaster@hostname.com, which is not correct.

Thanks.

Right now the mod uses the webmaster email address defined in the vbulletin settings.

I'm adding a new field in the mod settings for a custom 'from' email address in a later release.