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When I did my latest forum upgrades I did forum-wide mailings to let people know about the changes, and that I was running sweepstakes to celebrate. While most users are happy to hear from me there's always the occasional ones who are grumpy. They are used to one-click-unsubscribes from all their other feeds. They grump that unsubscribing from these mailings require them to figure out their username, figure out their password, log in, figure out where to change the email setting, etc. They feel it should be one click.

Thoughts? Is there a way to provide a one-click unsubscribe like many other engines do - one that unsubscribes without necessarily allowing access to the user's account in other ways?


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Excellent suggestion!


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+1


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And required by law in some countries!

So, +3.


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Well, I think it is a needed feature.
But it did not cut the mustard for 7.6.
But hopefully it would be something that happens soon.


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It really doesn't sound that difficult to create; when I get a little time I'll look at it...


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Does anyone want to give this a try?


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I saw this THREE times before I realized that there was a LINK on "this". Wow... you are one quick dude!!

Gotta admit that in the past 11 years, I haven't sent out a SINGLE forum-wide mailing to my members. Thought about it a few times, but never wanted to reap the sling-and-arrows from such a stunt.

With this mod, I might be willing to begin a new career of being a "highly engaged Administrator" (Read: Spam). Ha!

I can give it a test, but not until after I do the upgrade between xmas and New Years. I'm trying to build some HELP videos for my Forum before Jan 1st. Maybe that will be something that you-all would be interested in hearing about? Chow.


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Originally Posted by Bill B
Gotta admit that in the past 11 years, I haven't sent out a SINGLE forum-wide mailing to my members. Thought about it a few times, but never wanted to reap the sling-and-arrows from such a stunt.

ha ha. Same here, and I know that feeling! laugh

Originally Posted by Bill B
I'm trying to build some HELP videos for my Forum before Jan 1st. Maybe that will be something that you-all would be interested in hearing about? Chow.

Definitely. The most I've done is a few Photoshop graphics to point users at the right buttons to press.
(If you speak in the videos, try to do so in an English accent, so that I can rip them off for my users lol wink )

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Originally Posted by Yarpâ„¢
And required by law in some countries!


Here in the U.S. you must provide an unsubscribe link AND an physical mailing address. I got a P.O. Box for that reason... and have yet to send out any mass mailings either. LOL! The P.O. Box is good to have anyway - a lot of nutty people out there. onoes


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Dear Gizmo -

You are an angel smile. Thank you so much, I'll definitely give that a try the next time I send out a mailing.

Bill - Until now I've only done it every 2-3 years when there was a huge forum upgrade that changed things. I wanted to make sure members felt in the loop with substantial changes like that. But I definitely am finding that sending more regular mailings in general - for any site - builds community and engagement. It draws people into participating more.

So while you might get a few grumpy people, the benefits far outweigh that. You remind people who forgot about you to come give you a try again. You build a connection with your members who do visit.

It's also good to do it regularly so you can prune the bad-email addresses out in regular doses. Otherwise the one time you do send you'll do a deluge of bad email addresses, which can cause target servers to tag you as a spammer. So that's something to avoid. It's going to be inevitable with the first mailing but then after that if you keep a regular schedule you can prevent it from ever happening again.


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Originally Posted by BellaOnline
It's also good to do it regularly so you can prune the bad-email addresses out in regular doses. Otherwise the one time you do send you'll do a deluge of bad email addresses, which can cause target servers to tag you as a spammer. So that's something to avoid. It's going to be inevitable with the first mailing but then after that if you keep a regular schedule you can prevent it from ever happening again.
I'm curious what you and others do when you receive 'bounced' e-mails? Typically, I find that they belong to members who haven't visited in ages. Given that their e-mail address has changed, there is no way to contact them so that they can change their e-mail address to one that is valid and working. This little mod will definitely help to disable e-mails being send to such members in that case. But is there something else that can be done or should be done?

Just curious. [Linked Image from the-highway.com]


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Hmmm, I could make a mod which would alert users who have bounced emails to update their accounts; an admin would have to add them to a special group though...


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Originally Posted by Gizmo
Hmmm, I could make a mod which would alert users who have bounced emails to update their accounts; an admin would have to add them to a special group though...
Hmmmmm, and how would you alert them since their e-mail address is defunct and they rarely, if ever visit the forum? [Linked Image from the-highway.com]


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Originally Posted by Pilgrim
Hmmmmm, and how would you alert them since their e-mail address is defunct and they rarely, if ever visit the forum? [Linked Image from the-highway.com]
They'd receive a notification on the main page of your site I guess... I suppose you could also make it so that they couldn't post or view anything as well... Though they'd have to pm you to get removed from said group...


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What I do is ban them and put a note in the ban message that their email address is invalid. That way we don't mail them going forward. And if they do decide to log in for some reason, they'll see that ban message and contact me for more information on how to get set up again.

It would be nice if the 'remove bounces' script we have put them on the ban list instead of just marking them to not email them going forward smile.


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Originally Posted by BellaOnline
It would be nice if the 'remove bounces' script we have put them on the ban list instead of just marking them to not email them going forward smile.
Do you guys have an email pipe that sorts stuff? I thought of doing something in the past for that, but none of my email is on server


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Gizmo -

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking? I have a MailEnable mail server that runs on the same machine. It handles sorting the incoming and outgoing mail. I also use Katharion as a third party anti-spam system. It blocks 90% of all mail heading towards our server from ever reaching the server. That reduces our server load immensely.

A minor note for you - in your readme instructions you say:

# New Files #
languages/english/unsubscribe.php
scripts/unsubscribe.inc.php
templates/default/unsubscribe.tpl


You also should add the /languages/english/admin/unsubscribe.php in there.


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Gizmo -

OK a few more things to tweak smile.

You have your code in the first part of the loop - the "which" part. However, I'm not manually selecting my users. I'm sending out to thousands of them - everyone within my selection group. So your code which was on line 53 to add to the body wasn't activating.

I'm down in the else starting with line 81, which triggers if one is mailing to the whole group being selected. I.e. all non-banned members in my case.

So my code has to be down in line 217 and look like this:

// --------------------------------------
// Are we sending via BCC or one a a time
if ($onebyone) {
if ( (strcmp($Email,"") != 0) && preg_match("/@/",$Email) ) {

$mailbodycust = $mailbody . "\n\n<br><br>\n" . $ubbt_lang['UNSUBSCRIBE'] . ":<br>\n" . "<a href=\"" . $config['FULL_URL'] . "?ubb=unsubscribe&email=" . $Email . "\">" . $config['FULL_URL'] . "?ubb=unsubscribe&email=" . $Email . "</a>";

$sentto .= " $Email,";
$mailer->set_language($config['LANGUAGE']);
$mailer->set_subject('DSE_SUBJECT', array('SUBJECT' => $subject));
$mailer->set_salute('EMAIL_SALUTE',array('USERNAME' => $Display));
$mailer->add_content('DSE_CONTENT', array('CONTENT' => $mailbodycust));
$mailer->ubbt_mail($Email);


Then it fills in properly in the message.

However, the URL isn't right smile The URL this creates is:

http://www.romanceclass.com/forum?ubb=unsubscribe&email=income@lisashea.com

but that's not valid. It needs to be:

http://www.romanceclass.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=unsubscribe&email=income@lisashea.com

So the code therefore is:

$mailbodycust = $mailbody . "\n\n<br><br>\n" . $ubbt_lang['UNSUBSCRIBE'] . ":<br>\n" . "<a href=\"" . $config['FULL_URL'] . "/ubbthreads.php?ubb=unsubscribe&email=" . $Email . "\">" . $config['FULL_URL'] . "/ubbthreads.php?ubb=unsubscribe&email=" . $Email . "</a>";

Once I put that in, it does correctly generate user-specific code that works properly. When the user first goes there it gives them an unsubscribe button. When they click it and go to the link again, it lets them know that they are already unsubscribed.

When I go to that user via their profile, it does say:

From time to time we send out emails regarding this community.
Do you wish to receive these emails?

NO.

So that is all now tied together and set.

Last edited by BellaOnline; 01/02/2013 7:19 AM.

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One more tweak. This works fine for rows that are set to Off and On for the value of USER_ACCEPT_ADMIN_EMAILS. However, I have oodles of rows in my database where that value is simply blank. So those people don't get an option either way. The unsubscribe page just comes up with no options at all.

The blank people DO get mailed to, so that is a default setting of "On".

So I therefore tweaked the code in the template on lines 12 and 36. It now says:

{if ($current eq 'On' or $current eq '') and $process eq 'no'}

In essence that says that a blank value is the same as an on value, in terms of showing a message and giving a "turn off" button.

With that change I think it's set!


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LOL and just when we thought it couldn't get more confusing smile.

I just heard from a very early joiner of my forum that the unsubscribe wouldn't work for her. Turns out while most people in the database have "on" and "off" values - she has a "yes" value in her field! So at some point early on the values seem to have been yes and blank.

So now I'm tweaking the code to also watch for the "yes" value.


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Thanks for all of the tweaks; I'll try to go over the file sometime (unless you want to email me a copy of a modified copy of yours lol) to reflect your changes...

I don't really do mailings, so good call on the updates tongue...


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