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.
***

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tekguru

- How many emails maximum to send to each inactive user per inactive period. (0 for unlimited) - does this mean that if set to 3 then a user will get maximum of 3 emails after being inactive for 60 days? Then another 3 if inactive for 120 days?

No, that would be 3 emails total. if the users comes back to the forum but then goes inactive again he would be sent another 3 emails. if he never came back then he would never receive another email.

Originally Posted by tekguru

- After the first email, how long should the system wait before sending out subsequent emails? (Days) This I have set to 28, but if max emails is set as above then this would clash with the above?

if you have 60 days set for activity then on day 60 an email will go out. 28 days later the second email will go out, and another 28 days after that the 3rd email would go out.

Originally Posted by tekguru

2) As per attached is the Mod working incredibly quickly to send emails (and possibly travelling in time), or is the Users that have been sent the maximum number of emails count incorrect?

the plugin does work fast, and you will initially get a very large mailqueue, however i think that perticular statistic may be wrong and will have to look into it.

Originally Posted by tekguru

3) As per the attached there seems to be a spurious table (zero height) just above the test email box?

that is very random, and again i will have to look into it. thanks for pointing this out to me though.

Originally Posted by tekguru

More......

- The report page is getting incredibly long (understandable) - it might be an idea to paginate it and allow one to filter it based on bounced users only. Also to be able to erase the table - thinking of data storage sizes here.

Good idea. Will add this.

Originally Posted by tekguru

- If one does not wish to use the bounce change usergroup feature how does one turn that facility off as it only lists the usergroups, there is not an option for 'none'.

good point. i will set an "enable group move" option.

Originally Posted by tekguru

More 2 .....

1) The message to be sent specififes:

<p>Kindest Regards<br/>
The $forumtitle Team
<a href="$homeurl">$bbtitle</a></p>

But translates into (from looking at the test message):



So it looks like the '$forumtitle' variable is not being parsed?

Correct. I need to fix this.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

No, it's a server configuration issue. Generally, files sent by a PHP script are sent from nobody@domain.com unless you configure the server to do otherwise.

with sendmail you can specify -f to force a from address. im not saying its not server configuration, however in a lot of cases it can be fixed with -f

Originally Posted by djbaxter

I think this is a step backwards, to be blunt. EZ Bounce works on all email sent out by the forum, such as notifications, etc. It would be far better to have an option to specifiy the EZ Bounce headers, or even just to set them automatically if the admin indicates that EZ Bounce is installed.

Why reinvent the wheel? Especially when you're trying to reinvent only half the wheel...

You have a valid point, and this is the very reason why for the next version the modification will handle ALL emails sent out. I realised this was the only way when one member mentioned he uninstalled ezbounce.

from what i understand, with ezbounce you have to manually click a link in each bounced email to modify the user? that's just a manual process with a shortcut in my eyes. my vision was pure automation, and on request i might add.

Originally Posted by djbaxter

That's why the email notifications are a much better idea... no logs to delete or edit.

he would just get a giant email instead - i am working on ways to organise the data better.

[tekguru]

I too have uninstalled EZ Bounce as it was installed for me previously. If this Mod can replace that functionality automatically I'd be happy as it was a nightmare clicking on the bounce links.

A giant emial works for me unless detailled stats analysis is goignto be built into the Mod, if not the email is better as we can review and delete without the clogging of the database with unneeded data.

Cheers for clarifying the use of the settings, might be an idea to add this detail in the header of the Mod config page to that folks with poor memories like me will remember or of course for new users of the Mod

Glad me other bug reports and suggestions proves useful, look forward to the next version. In the interim if we want to clear the table built up what table do we need to empty?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by tekguru

I too have uninstalled EZ Bounce as it was installed for me previously. If this Mod can replace that functionality automatically I'd be happy as it was a nightmare clicking on the bounce links.

A giant emial works for me unless detailled stats analysis is goignto be built into the Mod, if not the email is better as we can review and delete without the clogging of the database with unneeded data.

Cheers for clarifying the use of the settings, might be an idea to add this detail in the header of the Mod config page to that folks with poor memories like me will remember or of course for new users of the Mod

Glad me other bug reports and suggestions proves useful, look forward to the next version. In the interim if we want to clear the table built up what table do we need to empty?

i actually have a version here sat on my hard drive that fully automates the bounce system. im just testing it as much as i can at the moment. i am going to be coding detailed stats and will also provide an email summery every day.

if the data stored is too large, you could set the days to keep the data to something small - currently it's for 1 month, but you could quite easily set it to 1 day (you could even set it to 0.25 or somemthing and it will clear every 6 hours!) or if you need to, there is a table called "remindermail_log" empty it.
i will add options to erase the database too.

im going to do a propper manual also..

[Moparx]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

which version of the mod are you using?

1.2.7

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by Moparx

1.2.7

it looks like the database was not set up properly on install. try un-installing the product and re-installing the product (as opposed to just overwriting). did you maybe upgrade from a previous version without uninstalling it first?

[Moparx]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

it looks like the database was not set up properly on install. try un-installing the product and re-installing the product (as opposed to just overwriting). did you maybe upgrade from a previous version without uninstalling it first?

Hmm.. I believe I did just overwrite the product this last time around.
The problem has been fixed.

[Gene Steinberg]

Alas, that can also zero the counters, which means, alas, that people might get their reminder emails all over again before the interval, right?

Worse, my members are still getting multiple copies of these reminders, and they're getting pissed off.

Everything is set correctly. I double checked.

Peace,
Gene

[Moparx]

Originally Posted by genesteinberg

Alas, that can also zero the counters, which means, alas, that people might get their reminder emails all over again before the interval, right?

Worse, my members are still getting multiple copies of these reminders, and they're getting pissed off.

Everything is set correctly. I double checked.

Peace,
Gene

Yes, uninstalling clears everything so everyone will be sent emails once again.

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by genesteinberg

Alas, that can also zero the counters, which means, alas, that people might get their reminder emails all over again before the interval, right?

Worse, my members are still getting multiple copies of these reminders, and they're getting pissed off.

Everything is set correctly. I double checked.

Peace,
Gene

have you tried maiqueue with table locking?

if you want to avoid sending emails out agian you need to run a query:
go to unixtimestamp.com and get the current time.
go into phpMyAdmin(if you cant do it from within vbulletin)
run query "UPDATE user SET reminder_emaildate = 'unix-timestamp-goes-here'" before you enable the product.