ProphpBB Support Forum

I would love to see something that would allow me to create emails that would be sent out to members of my forum telling them that they haven't visited for awhile and we'd love to see them back, etc. Just thought I'd throw that out. Maybe someone has already suggested it I don't know, but I think that would be a great help for me since I have many inactive users. Thanks!

I think this probably comes under the same heading as mass emails/PMs that has been discussed in the past. That facility has been disabled due to the high risk of getting blacklisted.

Oh okay. Have other forums been blacklisted then, cause I get emails like that from other forums.

Well, other hosts have been blacklisted from ISP's and hence new forum owners do not recieve confirmation emails and so that would deter new members from joining.

Also, the emails come from ProphpBB mailing system when you send it through a forum, so ProphpBB would be classed as the 'Mailer'. So, if you have 1000 forums, each sending 1 mass mail a week, and an average of 5 reciepients (some have over 200 members) then you have 200,000 emails a week from ProphpBB, hence ISP's consider it spam or junk.

freeforums.org is a prime example (Gmail blocked them at one point and so it takes hours to receive the mails from them) of course they denied it and blamed your own ISP...plus their mass mail/PM/notification system for PHPBB3 is currently broken and they keep denying that as well *sighs* good job i moved

if you ever want to send out a mail to all your members, gather all their e-mail addresses and e-mail them via your own e-mail host and set up a template similar to what the mass mail would use to make it look more official...the other option would be to look into a mailing list system (e.g. bravenet's mailing list system)

This is what I've done, using a simple list in an Excel spreadsheet, which I then use as a mail-merge database. You do have to be on the ball when new members join your forum though and add them to the database straight away.

I would advise caution using this approach though. Any mass mailing runs the risk of being marked as spam resulting in you being blacklisted. The more members you have the greater the risk so don't start banging out mailings on a weekly basis. It's what your forum's for in the long run, and posting announcements or news in your forum should remove the need to send out lots of mass mailings - and prompt your members to sign in and read stuff too.

I don't see much of a problem with sending out a welcome email though, as these would only happen once per member, unless you're gaining dozens of members a day (lucky you if you are of course).

I really only send out mass mailings when I am in need of alerting users of forum downtime and if we have moved hosts, etc. I also do send out the odd reminder to inactive users...but you can do this anyway

Oh okay well that all makes sense. I don't have many memberse yet, so maybe I'll just stick with emailing each inactive user personally. Thanks for your help and as my forum grows maybe I'll get a mailing list going. Thanks!

I'd love to do this, but I get 5+ members a day. What bothers me is, NONE of them post. :(

That is a problem that many of us suffer from, not necessarily 5+ members a day, but those that join and don't post - not even to say "hello"

users who do not find the time to post a welcome message...i usually deactivate their account and force a reactivation

That is way too pushy for me.
Members are welcome to join and I'm not going to force a reactivation.

It does draw a bit of a tear in my eye when they don't even say hello.

well i dont usually deactivate them untill at leastone month of no posts at all on the forums

I tried that with my biker forum and got a right telling off from the club Committee when I deleted a couple of users who not only hadn't posted in six months but had not even bothered to log in after their initial registration!!!