Mini Mods - Email reminder for inactive users

Inactive reminder emails. This mod was designed to send out a reminder to inactive members to try and win them back.

***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
***

[goddess_dix]

Originally Posted by TROLL

i'd love to have an option added to set a total number of times to email a user, just so its not sending them emails until the end of time which is unnecessary for the forum and annoying to the user. either that, or if its possible to include a link in the email that says "if you wish to stop receiving emails about this, please follow this link: __________" where they can unsubscribe.
i do want to try to get users back on the forum, but i don't want to aggravate anyone or invade their privacy without them being able to ever stop it.

i think that's a great idea...i'll be you could pretty easily change the templates yourself to do that by looking at the phrases in the emails for susbcribed threads, which has an option to disable further site email if i'm not mistaken. that will also keep you more sypatico with established practices if a spam question comes up.

i also have the mod installed to manage bouncing email addys-lots of bounced emails does hurt your "email rep", so weeding them out as i go is part of my overall site email management plan...

[TROLL]

what email bouncing mod are you talking about?

and i have a question about how many emails it sends at a time and how often it sends... i have mine set up to send 10 at a time, but how often does it do this? after looking into it i see that it only takes my setup about 20 minutes to send 4000 emails
how can i go about slowing this down properly?

and the yahoo/hotmail spam thing concerns me... is there a way around this at all? for all i know i've already been flagged (have had this running for about a week now)

[WEBDosser]

**REMOVED** just in case.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by b6gm6n

Just To Let You All Know, If You Use This Mod You And Have A High Amount Of Members You Will Be Banned From Yahoo, Hotmail Domains And Many Other As This Mod Regardless Of Settings Will Jam Your Server And Mark Your Own Domain As A Spamming Domain, I Have Tried Over & Over Again To Warn People About This...use At Your Own Risk

Originally Posted by b6gm6n

my host has disabled my account due to this mod for safety... thanks mate, thanks very ***kin much, i will warn people about this mod on my providers forums... also, i was using the version the maker said... whatever.whatever... once an hour... 20 emails max.... exceeded my limit by 1000 every hour mate....DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by b6gm6n

If there's anything you would like to do to get my domain back in yahoo's good books then please tell us...cheers

And you could have avoided all of that if you had:

1. read the thread

2. installed version 1.09, NOT 1.11

3. set the options using a bit of intelligence

4. added instructions for opting out of future emails in the options for the add-on

5. known what you were doing before randomly installing add-ons

But thanks for your very insightful and mature input.

[goddess_dix]

Originally Posted by TROLL

what email bouncing mod are you talking about?

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=138884

note- you have to check for yahoo's soft bounces before you manage them, info in the thread about it.

and i have a question about how many emails it sends at a time and how often it sends... i have mine set up to send 10 at a time, but how often does it do this? after looking into it i see that it only takes my setup about 20 minutes to send 4000 emails

look and see how often the cron is set to run in your "scheduled tasks" of the admincp. you can adjust the frequency there, i imagine.

and the yahoo/hotmail spam thing concerns me... is there a way around this at all? for all i know i've already been flagged (have had this running for about a week now)

anytime you send bulk email, you have to deal with this. do you have a dedicated server, i guess? it would be a good idea to get yourself signed on for the feedback loops for those places that have them to help monitor. (for example, i'm on the aol feedback loop, so if anybody reports any email coming from my server as spam, i get notified.) yahoo doesn't as far as i know; they have a terrible practice of "soft bouncing" messages with the thinking that spammers don't retry, but real mail transport agents will. and if you host clients on your box, that's another good reason to get signed up.

honestly, i think that staying informed, making sure your emails have clear unsub instructions, and using some common sense will go a long way. when you get reported as spam, that generally means a person looks at your email from my understanding. so make sure it doesn't look like spam. make sure it says who you are, that they have agreed to get admin emails, and how to stop them...

while managing your email rep is actually a valid concern, i consder the stuff b6gm6n wrote to be straight trolling. (also found it ironic that your username is "troll" but you ain't the biggest troll in the room.)

[Codeman05]

Hi,

I just installed this mod and when I run the CRON manually, I get this nice error:

db)) { exit; } error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE); if($vbulletin->options['reminder_active']){ $now = time(); $datetime = array(); $quantity = $vbulletin->options['quantity']; $datetime[lastpost] = $now - (60 * 60 * 24 * $vbulletin->options['inactivity']); $datetime[lastemail] = $now - (60 * 60 * 24 * $vbulletin->options['frequency']); $usergroups = explode(",",$vbulletin->options['usergroups']); if($vbulletin->options['reminder_posts']){ $result = $vbulletin->db->query_read("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE lastpost < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16"); //print("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE lastpost < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16
"); $vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET emailDate = '$now' WHERE lastpost < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16"); //print("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET emailDate = '$now' WHERE lastpost < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16
"); } else { $result = $vbulletin->db->query_read("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16"); //print("SELECT * FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16
"); $vbulletin->db->query_write("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET emailDate = '$now' WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16"); //print("UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user SET emailDate = '$now' WHERE lastactivity < '$datetime[lastpost]' AND emailDate < '$datetime[lastemail]' AND options & 16
"); } print("Found " . mysql_num_rows($result) . " Inactive Users.

"); while($row = $vbulletin->db->fetch_array($result)){ if(is_member_of($row, $usergroups)){ print("Sent To: $row[username]
"); $username = $row[username]; $toemail = $row[email]; $userid = $row[userid]; $bbtitle = $vbulletin->options['bbtitle']; $homeurl = $vbulletin->options['homeurl']; $forumurl = $vbulletin->options['bburl']; $hometitle = $vbulletin->options['hometitle']; eval('$message = "' . addslashes($vbulletin->options['message']) . '";'); $message = stripslashes($message); //$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\nContent-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n"; $uheaders .= "To: $username <$email>" . "\r\n"; $uheaders .= "From: " . $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'] . " Reminder Service <" . $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] . ">" . "\r\n"; eval('$subject = "' . addslashes($vbulletin->options['subject']) . '";'); $subject = stripslashes($subject); if($vbulletin->options['reminder_emailfooter']){ $message = $message . "Email Reminder System Provided By Mished.co.uk"; } /*if(@mail($email, $subject, $message, $headers)){ print("mailing $email (done)
"); } else { print("mailing $email (failed)
"); }*/ if(is_valid_email($toemail)){ $sentlist .= "$username "; vbmail($toemail, $subject, $message, $notsubscription = false, $from = $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'], $uheaders = '', $username = ''); } else { $failedlist .= "$username "; } } } if($sentlist == ""){ log_cron_action("No Emails to send", $nextitem); vbmail($vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'], "Inactive User Reminder Email Report", "This email shows that the product is installed and working as it should be.\n\n\nThere were no inactive users at this time.", $notsubscription = false, $from = $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'], $uheaders = "From: " . $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'] . " Reminder Service <" . $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] . ">" . "\r\n", $username = ''); } else { log_cron_action("Emails sent to:$sentlist. We tried to email the following users, but their email address was invalid:$failedlist", $nextitem); vbmail($vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'], "Inactive User Reminder Email Report", "This email shows that the product is installed and working as it should be.\n\n\nEmails sent to:" . $sentlist . ". We tried to email the following users, but their email address was invalid:" . $failedlist . "", $notsubscription = false, $from = $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'], $uheaders = "From: " . $vbulletin->options['bbtitle'] . " Reminder Service <" . $vbulletin->options['webmasteremail'] . ">" . "\r\n", $username = ''); } } else { print("Product is inactive at this time!"); } ?>

Running version 1.1.1 on VB 3.6.6

Any thoughts?

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Codeman05

Running version 1.1.1 on VB 3.6.6

Any thoughts?

Yes. Uninstall version 1.11. Install version 1.09.

[Codeman05]

Unfortunately that seems to have made no difference.
Deleted the old cron file and uninstalled 1.1.1, uploaded and reinstalled 1.0.9, same error.

[FinalX-TeaM]

thanks...

[Code Monkey]

Originally Posted by Codeman05

Hi,

I just installed this mod and when I run the CRON manually, I get this nice error:



Running version 1.1.1 on VB 3.6.6

Any thoughts?

For some odd reason he is using short tags. Just go to the first line of remindermail.php and change <? to <?php and that will go away.