what to do with members who's Email-address is bouncing ?

You can set their state to: Awaiting email confirmation (from edit).
If a user is within that group, are still emails sent from other parts (notifications, ...) my forum to the user, or are emails not sent until the user is confirming his mail? Or are still emails sent asking the user to confirm this email?
 
You can set their state to: Awaiting email confirmation (from edit).
I don't think its a good idea to mix new users with users who have problematic emails addresses. Both groups are different and need a different approach. The first group needs a few email reminders to activate their email. The second group should not be emailed at all. The second group needs to be alerted in other ways. (on site / facebook / IM)
The first group can be deleted after a few reminder as they have no posts. The second group generally has posting members and if your website is old then this group will contain your most senior members.
 
I have no qualms deleting members who can't be bothered to update their email address, especially after several requests.

I have done so in the past and will do so again if necessary.
 
I have no qualms deleting members who can't be bothered to update their email address, especially after several requests.

I have done so in the past and will do so again if necessary.
Even if members have many posts, blogs and other content? In the last 11 years I have had many members come back years after their email account became inactive.
 
Would you remove the mail address of bounced users or is it more useful to have it still in place?
 
Would you remove the mail address of bounced users or is it more useful to have it still in place?
Do you mean remove completely from the database? I would not do that. There are various factors that would cause issues if unaddressed.
For example: email providers like gmail will keep on sending bounce notifications for old emails. This can persist for 3 weeks. The system will need to be able to differentiate between bounce messages for current and for old email addresses.
I would block users from re-using email addresses that repeatedly cause problems. People have a tendency to keep switching between malfunctioning addresses.
Often members ask for help. Its essential that the staff can see their old email addresses and the change history. So its important to have the old mail address in the user account log. Preferably with the bounce reason in there as well. This makes it much easier to provide support.
 
Yes, indeed. And also: bounce reason, number of bounces, bounce_stage (re-activation process stage),.

Some other things to keep an eye on is not deactivating staff accounts (but do notify them and limit email sending) and not letting banned members back in.

A bounce_stage is handy if you want to guide your users through reactivation of their account. I do this with popups instructing them what to do next. (on vbulletin) This is particular helpful for members who are less computer savvy. It cuts down on support requests.
 
To expand on the latter:
There is some benefit of having bounced members in a special group. Currently I have 32.000 users awaiting email confirmation. This is a mix of newly registered users and bounced members. I send reminder emails to users that are newly registered and I delete 0 post accounts that are not activated after 2 months. If I split members up in 2 separate groups then it will be easier to address those account that are in limbo.

The benefit of using a usergroup (though there may be another way) is that you can add notices to guide users through the reactivation process. For example:
  1. bounced status: show notice to inform user.
  2. changed email address: show notice to let user confirm email address
  3. confirmed email address: show notice to let user add site email address to contacts.
 
If you keep mailing or sending thread updates to bounced email addresses you'll be labeled a spammer. This should be built into xenforo to put these accounts on hold or something if it detects a bounceback.
 
Couldn't we get xenforo to automatically trigger a notification to them on login to update their email address if emails to them bounce more than once?
 
A bounce message may just be sent to your server for the reason that the email provider has problems or that the inbox is full or just that the provider is stupid (AOL). So counting the bounce messages is not a good way to handle it. You also need to define what is a bounce and what the severity of it is.
 
Usually the email log provides detailled explanations about what happened with the message ("inbox full", "message is delayed", ...).
 
Usually the email log provides detailled explanations about what happened with the message ("inbox full", "message is delayed", ...).
True, if you keep an eye on the different wordings and codes used by various email providers.
 
In our case, we normally put the member in a special Inactive group that has no privileges. If they are interested in staying members, they will soon get in touch with us to restore their membership, and we'll get the updated address.
 
I think its a good idea to offer an alternative way of activating their account: asides of ther normal email activation they should also be able to activate by facebook, google, microsatan, yahoo!, vk, etc.
 
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