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AS OF MARCH 16TH 2013 - THIS ADDON IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED DUE TO INSUFFICIENT TIME AVAILABLE.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.
================================================== =======

What does it do?
=====================================
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
=====================================
* 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
--------------------------
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
=======================================
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

[KittyWireless]

Originally Posted by TalkVirginia

Can you post the link?

This is the link that is showing at the bottom of one of the emails:

To stop receiving this email, visit this URL:
http://www.kittyforums.net/misc.php?do=unsub&u=419

And when we click on that link, we get taken the FAQ - Smilie List page.

[aileron79]

Originally Posted by TalkVirginia

I should have more time to reply to your post this weekend. Sorry. Things have been very busy.

Hi TalkVirginia,

as I wanted at least some basic feedback inside the acp about the mail addresses producing errors, I modified your add-on by myself.

First, I added a column "bounced" to the reminder log in the database. Then, I modified your inactivitylog.php to show more columns (returned (y/n), last activity). The last step was to implement a very, very basic imap parser which processes all mail in the mailbox (configuration inside the file). This file is run as a cronjob outside the forum. I don't know if you have already done something about your bounce manager. If not, those few lines of code might get you started. The mail parser is more than basic, it's more like a proof of concept.

For all the others: You are free to use that modification but please note that I won't support it at all - this is code I just wrote for my needs. I am still waiting for a "professional" bounce manager to be implemented as my simple solution which is just 50 lines of code most likely won't work with all mail servers. Don't use this modification in production without fully understanding the script!

This is the DB statement to add the bounce column. Make sure you change the db/prefix accordingly.

ALTER TABLE `YOURDB`.`YOURPREFIXinactiveuserlog` ADD COLUMN `bounced` VARCHAR(1) NOT NULL AFTER `validemail`;

Thanks again for this awesome mod! Cheers,
Aileron

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by KittyWireless

This is the link that is showing at the bottom of one of the emails:

To stop receiving this email, visit this URL:
http://www.kittyforums.net/misc.php?do=unsub&u=419

And when we click on that link, we get taken the FAQ - Smilie List page.

Looks like you didn't get the update when you installed the latest version. Did you select overwrite?

The correct unsubscribe url should be pointing to

http://www.mydomain.com/forumroot/optout-reminders.php?u=$userid&e=$email

Obviously you will want to replace "mydomain.com/forumroot" with your own domain and path to your forum.

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by aileron79

Hi TalkVirginia,

as I wanted at least some basic feedback inside the acp about the mail addresses producing errors, I modified your add-on by myself.

First, I added a column "bounced" to the reminder log in the database. Then, I modified your inactivitylog.php to show more columns (returned (y/n), last activity). The last step was to implement a very, very basic imap parser which processes all mail in the mailbox (configuration inside the file). This file is run as a cronjob outside the forum. I don't know if you have already done something about your bounce manager. If not, those few lines of code might get you started. The mail parser is more than basic, it's more like a proof of concept.

For all the others: You are free to use that modification but please note that I won't support it at all - this is code I just wrote for my needs. I am still waiting for a "professional" bounce manager to be implemented as my simple solution which is just 50 lines of code most likely won't work with all mail servers. Don't use this modification in production without fully understanding the script!

This is the DB statement to add the bounce column. Make sure you change the db/prefix accordingly.

ALTER TABLE `YOURDB`.`YOURPREFIXinactiveuserlog` ADD COLUMN `bounced` VARCHAR(1) NOT NULL AFTER `validemail`;

Thanks again for this awesome mod! Cheers,
Aileron

Hey Aileron,

Thanks for working on this! I do have some code I'm working on but I'll definitely take a look at this and if I can fit it in with what I've got already.

I'm still waiting to hear if Eric is still working on a release for the vBouncer addon since I'd like to separate the bouncer from this mod so it can be used with any email that is sent from vBulletin.

[TalkVirginia]

Just a quick update this morning. I'll be moving the bounced email management functionality to a separate addon. This will reduce the amount of settings that everyone will have to deal with as far as Email reminders go, and reduce the confusion as well.

Jim

[ForceHSS]

when will you upload the new version

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by ForceHSS

when will you upload the new version

When it's ready.

[magic74]

*double post*

[magic74]

it´s a really usefull tool. Thank you very much.

If you add the option to show the members who returned like aileron did it would be perfect (for me).

[TalkVirginia]

Originally Posted by magic74

it?s a really usefull tool. Thank you very much.

If you add the option to show the members who returned like aileron did it would be perfect (for me).

Yes, his fix is a good idea. I've been a bit swamped lately but I'll work on incorporating that.