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.
***

[fly]

I use Google Mail for Domains. Is there any way to set EZBounce up with it?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by flypaper

I use Google Mail for Domains. Is there any way to set EZBounce up with it?

im not entirely against support for other mods in here, but in this case i dont even know the answer. i expect someone will.

[fly]

All you'd need (I'd think) would be a cron job that would check an external account for bounced emails.

(I say that like I could do it, lol)

[needtheend]

I use Vbulletin 3.7.3 PL1 and VBSEO 3.2.0

when i installed the reminder plugin i have lots of error mesaages bottom of the site so at the footer in AdminCP. The plugin and vb works (i think) but too many errors we have like that;

Warning: reset() [function.reset]: Passed variable is not an array or object in public_html/includes/functions_vbseo_seo.php on line 63

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in includes/functions_vbseo_seo.php on line 64

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /home/mynode/mysite/htdocs/includes/functions_vbseo_url.php on line 420

Warning: strtr() [function.strtr]: The second argument is not an array. in includes/functions_vbseo_url.php on line 424

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /includes/functions_vbseo_url.php on line 420

Do you have any idea or solution to solve this problem?

[tpearl5]

<a href="http://www.vbseo.com/f2/vbseo-3-2-vb-3-7-3-email-reminder-26512/#post165677" target="_blank">http://www.vbseo.com/f2/vbseo-3-2-vb...12/#post165677</a>

[needtheend]

it doesnt solve the problem.
i did what they said. Now i have the same error in functions_vbseo_url.php in line 409

[dabuki]

I'm planning on turning this product on on my site but I would like to get some questions answered. My site is quite large and has been around for many years. This means there are many thousands of inactive users whom I'd like to contact. Is there any way of controlling this product so it only processes a set number of users every day. I left it on the default of 3 users per cycle but I can't see if there is a way to change how often a cycle is run.

[dfc005]

Originally Posted by C Braithwaite

i am using the vbmail command and i have tested and tested and tested and i ant find any evidence of a duplicated email. it could well be the case that the same query is being executed like you suggest. in vbulletin's options it mentions about big boards and multiple emails being sent, and suggests the use of enabling it's table locking option to avoid such an error. have you enabled this option? i will code in a short delay to stop the same query from being executed twice (assuming this is the reason behind the multiple emails)

thanks for your feedback, comments, and suggestions. :up:

I definitely have table locking enabled. And it's definitely sending out multiple emails. The only thing I can think is that the same query is being executed. My board is quite busy with a large user bases so pages would be getting hit all the time by many concurrent connections.

Looking forward to getting a new release, hopefully with a resolution. Really like the idea of the mod!

[trilljester]

Ouch, looks like this is a nice product, but doesn't work well with VBSEO. I wonder why that is? Isn't this just sending out emails via a cron job? Why would that foul up VBSEO?

[C Braithwaite]

Originally Posted by dabuki

I'm planning on turning this product on on my site but I would like to get some questions answered. My site is quite large and has been around for many years. This means there are many thousands of inactive users whom I'd like to contact. Is there any way of controlling this product so it only processes a set number of users every day. I left it on the default of 3 users per cycle but I can't see if there is a way to change how often a cycle is run.

em in the process of adding a delay between processing of users.. i can add a maximum per day also.

Originally Posted by dfc005

I definitely have table locking enabled. And it's definitely sending out multiple emails. The only thing I can think is that the same query is being executed. My board is quite busy with a large user bases so pages would be getting hit all the time by many concurrent connections.

Looking forward to getting a new release, hopefully with a resolution. Really like the idea of the mod!

hopefully this delay will help, but in my most recent version i have had no evidence of this during testing.

Originally Posted by trilljester

Ouch, looks like this is a nice product, but doesn't work well with VBSEO. I wonder why that is? Isn't this just sending out emails via a cron job? Why would that foul up VBSEO?

it doesnt use the cron - it is triggered on page load. i have no idea about vbseo, but i would be happy to alter code if somone could identify the exact error (i dont use vbseo so i can test). it could be something simple as a conflicting variable, but im sure all mine are prefixed...