UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums Resources and Customizing Admin Zone Mass Email and Bad Email Addresses

I know this issue has been raised but I would like to raise it again.

Every six months or so I mail out a mass email to let my forum members know about new features and so on. I get a fair number of bounce-backs from people who changed email addresses.

I send to all members except banned ones. I don't want to have to ban or delete members whose email address is non-functional; that seems rather harsh. Some of these people are still active and posting.

I would like to be able to flag their account as "invalid email address" for two reasons. One, so I can skip them when I do my mass email. Two, so when they go into their forum profile it says right there that there is an issue with their email address so they can fix it. Otherwise they'll never know!

An alternative is to have some sort of flag of "get email from admin" that I can turn off - which is less helpful because now they have no idea that it's because their email address was bad. It would be great if there was a feature in the control panel - if this is the route we have to take - that both sets the flag and sends them a PM with a generic note, so that way they see the flashing message box and know what was done and how to fix it.

Finally, it really needs to be handled *somehow*. If you just blast out messages to bad email addresses repeatedly, that is exactly how a company blocks you as a spammer. I have no doubt that after this current blast goes out, that I'm running right now, that at least one or two ISPs will have auto-blocked me as a result and I'll have to go deal with them ...

I agree, we need some method to track down these invalid email addresses - as the forum grows, so does the problem.

Well, you'd have to do this all manually... For very good reasons...

Your forum would HAVE to "read in" email, even then, their mail server would have to return a specific error code which some just do not... So you could end up flagging valid messages back (away messages, challenge messages, deferred messages which state another error, etc).

even then, you'd have to have several ways to read in messages:
1. Email piping (where your server sends the email directly to the forum).
2. POP3/IMAP (where your forum would check for new messages).

#2 is the only real solution however, as some people will not have the knowlege to not bork their email configuration files and some users are on shared hosts which do not have the ability to edit the raw aliases configuration. Some people also host their email on 3rd party servers (like myself).

Haven't looked into how mailing lists scripts handle this - but they do. Albeit usually on a three strike rule.

I raised this too, as i found 9,0000 e-mails in a bounce back.
+ If they subscribe to watch lists and then there e-mail
becomes invalid, where do they go !!

That was a lot of my 9,0000

And the only work around was to go into that persons account
and turn off all there notifications.

Where a master switch admin side (DO NOT E_MAIL )
would help the cause.

IMO

The reality is that unless you have Admin rights on the Server you're not going to be able to automate this.

You would need to have the rights to read all mail logs (a normal non-admin user won't have that right on Windows or Linux hosting)

For those that own or have admin rights then yes it could be scripted to an automated routine. A lot of scripting work, but could be done.

Like I said, #2 is the only viable option

Both are viable, and could run in tandem.

Think of all of the coding that'd have to be done, #1 is redundant and has major problems (you're putting groupee in a position where they're telling people they have to edit config files for one; some systems work differantly for another, users won't be able to do this on shared hosts, etc), whereas #2 anyone can do as it just reads pop3/IMAP

not at all - I run another script that allows the choice between setting up a pipe for incoming emails, and one where the script checks the mailbox and puts the email into the script.

I have set the former up before fairly easily, but the alternative was a 2 second job to get working.

When this topic comes up I keep thinking about the system used by mailing list programs (I think maillist, or mailman?) that would auto unsubscribe a member if their mail bounced X number of times.

I'm pretty sure Ecartis or Majordomo doesn't have this feature (but I could be mistaken) so it must be one of the others.

The concept is there so it could be another viable option.

Yes, but it'd be easier on Rick (or someone else) to just code something that works for everyone vs having to code soemthin for piping which most people won't be able to do, or pop3/imap

For 7.3 I will release a hack where you can just copy/paste one or e-mails in a formfield, and it will give you a list of all users that matches the e-mail adresses in those mails and will give you both a link to the profile, and a button that will unsubscribe from any e-mail.

Hmmm sounds interesting. Thanks

Your the man.

Easy when you think about it really.
It doesn't have to be complicated at all.

Yes I am QUITE happy to not have the system trying to capture email messages and do this for me. I would *much* rather make the decision of turning this on or off myself. There are lots of issues we have with our mail server which create bounces but which I ignore, because they are a known issue that will be resolved.

So I am happy to do it myself, but I need something I *can* do. If I could have a form box to paste in a list of invalid email addresses, and then have it show me a list of matching members, that I could do a "check all" and then "mark all as do not email" that would be *perfect*.

The sooner the better too. This is a fairly large problem for both of my servers.

I want to note that unsubscribing from threads is helpful - but we really need a global "do not mail" setting on each profile. This would take into account my system-wide mailings, the birthday mailings, and so on.

Agreed.

However, if the user has set "do not accept admin emails" they should not receive mailings from the member management screen, or birthday reminders.

Is there a sql we can run to change all the users mailing preferences to "Email a new Topic only" for there watch lists.

This way we can gain some control.
And if they want more e-mails they can update there settings.
Just Pre 7.3 its all or nothing.

My thoughts.

Yes, it is possible in 7.3 - I think the following would work.

Make a note of this, ready for when the beta is released

UPDATE ubbt_WATCH_LISTS SET WATCH_NOTIFY_IMMEDIATE = '2' WHERE WATCH_NOTIFY_IMMEDIATE = '1' and WATCH_TYPE = 'f'

****This will not work on 7.2x or earlier****

Incidentally the default is to notify them of a new post rather than a new topic.

Perhaps it would be better to have an extra item in the dropdown.

Change 'Add forum to watched forums'

to

'Notify me when a new post is added to forum'
'Notify me when a new topic is added to forum'

OOOOOOOooooo

That default should be changed IMO to New Topic Like you say Ian.

Nice one for the sql Ian,
as i can just put a forum Notice up that all settings have been update to New Topic only

The check_all button is not there, but this might be what you are looking for!

Sample screen:

Excellent looks good to me

Yes that would be lovely

I'm on 7.3 now and would love this in the control panel area. Is the code done for this for 7.3?

yarp's mod should work with 7.3 -- i had a look @ his bounce.php

Well I tried it with just one email address and I got this error -

Script: E:\forums\admin\bounce.php
Line#: 146
SQL Error: Table 'ubbt7.ubbt_user_profile' doesn't exist
SQL Error #: 1146
Query: update ubbt_USER_PROFILE set USER_EMAIL_WATCHLISTS = 0, USER_ACCEPT_ADMIN_EMAILS = 'Off', USER_NOTIFY_ON_PM = 'Off' where USER_ID = 29717

OK I hand edited bounce.php to have the correct (for me) table name and it seems to work now. That might be something they want to update in the actual script, so it works for all people going forwards.

When I look at that user's information in the control panel, I don't see anywhere that it lets you know that they do or do not receive email from admin people. That would be a very valuable thing for me to know when looking at people. Can this be an enhancement request for the next version? I am fine with using this bounce script to remove the mail checkbox on peoples' accounts, but it would be nice to visually see that status on their control panel area.

I'd like there to be a "check all" option - I'm doing these names 25 at a time (longer than that times out) so I have to paste in 25 names, check 25 boxes, press the button, repeat. It would make things a little more quick if I could just click the "select all" button

Oh one more request - can you alternate colors on the lines? When I do 15-20 at a time sometimes I need to ignore one person and I have to count up or down from the top or bottom to figure out which checkbox goes with that entry. Thanks!

OK I edited the bounce processing file - since this is taking me hours - and added "checked" after the checkbox code. Now they all start out checked by default, which is at least making that part much quicker.

should alternate background red / blue .. change to whatever colors you like

Oops, kinda forgot this topic Working on an update now.

ok, un(check) all is now available, table bug is fixed, and SD's color alternation code is both fixed and added

available at ubbdev.

yah, i kinda forgot to use a real $count, instead of the user id there..

good catch Yarp.

is it over at DEV ?

Good work Chaps
I would love to see this as stock

I realize this is an old posting - we found this quite useful! However we must have done an upgrade in here somewhere and now when we try to use this form it says

"It appears that you have reached an update page without submitting any data."

Any ideas what we need to change to get this to work now?

You'll need to add this after the form is opened in the html

<input type="hidden" name="valid_post" value="1" />

We'll give that a try - thanks!