Bounced Email Users Should Be Able to Re-Activate Their Account

[DeltaHF]

If a user's account is placed into the "Email invalid (bounced)" state, the only way they can restore their account is by changing their email address.

This is not explained in the error message displayed, nor do I believe it is optimal behavior. For example, if their account was deactivated due to a temporary, soft bounce, they should be able to send themselves a re-activation email (just as they could if they were in the "Awaiting email confirmation [from edit]" state).

I understand how this works and how to get around the problem, but it is very confusing for most typical users to understand. Many users will also only have one email address, so they will not be able to associate their account with a secondary backup address without great difficulty.

 

[Joeychgo]

Agreed

 

[Gladius]

Yes, please.

 

[Joe Link]

I agree, this is a big problem with our forum. Someone's inbox will be full so they get kicked into the invalid state then they aren't able to get back to valid without entering another email address. Usually this other email address isn't a good contact and most don't change it back to their main email because they think it won't work with the forum now.

Even a button on the notice that says something like "this is my correct email address" would be helpful, but we have to find an elegant way to handle this common occurrence.

 

[Oldengine]

When a new user has anything but Registered or Awaiting Approval in their User State, they are pretty much lost! I need to get a report of those because I suspect that there are more than a few. Email Providers are very tough these days with the ton of daily spam coming through.

 

[beerForo]

This can be mitigated with the Notice system using the User State variable, enter whatever text you want for each state.

 

[Joe Link]

This can be mitigated with the Notice system using the User state variable, enter whatever text you want for each state.

That's what I've done, including adding helpful links. Unfortunately there's no way to mitigate the issue I described in post #4.

 

[beerForo]

Okay so the problem here is they can't enter the same email address in which case it is actually valid. I get it.

 

[Xon]

A successful password reset actually will kick them out of the "Awaiting email confirmation [from edit]" state

 

[beerForo]

THE IRONY!

I was locked out today and the last email I got was this topic.

The next notifications that came in were flagged by SpamAssassin (score: 4.4) and I got locked out of XF. I could not update my email. Would not accept the same. I tired another email and still did not get the notifications. I had to whitelist XF. I wonder if they changed their emails today. No others have be flagged.

I understand the frustration now.

 

[alexm]

Apparently you can use CAPITALS to fool the script into accepting the same email but I haven't checked myself yet!

 

[Alpha1]

This can be mitigated with the Notice system using the User State variable, enter whatever text you want for each state.

Unfortunately people rarely read whats right under their nose. I have 30+ notices to mitigate many different situations. As soon as there is more than 1 notice on the page, people will no longer read it.

I like the one click login function that more and more websites offer. For example if you try to log in to your Facebook account a few times and then wait a day, then Facebook will send you a one click login link. Something like that would be awesome.

 

[Gladius]

I've routinely heard from people who've had a single notice displayed on every page for literally weeks that they never read it. I don't know how, but I've got plenty of first-hand experience that there is a sizeable number of forum users who are perfectly capable of ignoring notices, no matter how big, obvious and/or persistent they are. So nothing really important should ever be handled via notices -- a good number of people will simply ignore them.

 

[DeltaHF]

This edge case hit pretty hard today.

As a result of the widespread Google outage, Gmail started hard-bouncing a lot (not sure if it was all or just a subset) of addresses. This resulted in hundreds of account deactivations in my forum (as it should), but I suddenly had a bunch of confused users with no clear way back into their accounts.

As an aside, I would also encourage you all to check your Email Bounce Log in the AdminCP to see if you have any users affected. They might just not know it yet.

 

[Brent W]

Agreed. There needs to be a way to reconfirm the same email.

 

[Mike]

It's worth noting that there was a change in 2.1.9 that relates to this: https://xenforo.com/community/threa...irm-email-address-without-changing-it.178780/ (Though I don't think it's likely as significant as what this suggestion is requesting.) It does allow people to trigger the reconfirmation process without changing their email.

(In terms of the Google outage, it didn't seem to trigger any hard bounces here, though maybe we were lucky.)