What's New Digest

What's New Digest 5.0.6

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to determine whether it's responsible for the high complaint rate that we've been seeing

FWIW, it is quite likely that WhatsNewDigest is at least indirectly responsible - it is going to be the number one source of bulk email sends from your site and generates a significant volume of email traffic.

If your mailing list isn't already clean and you aren't already restricting who receives the digest emails - you are naturally going to get a lot of complaints or bounces from each send.

Here is a chart of my daily sending reputation on SparkPost - it drops most Sundays when my digest emails go out and I get an increase in bounces/complaints:

1710018232421.webp

I don't think the emails being sent are themselves invalid - they should all have the one-click unsubscribe header added (make sure you are running XF 2.2.15 and WND 5.0.6) - it will be the volume of emails and who they are being sent to that will be the issue.
 
FWIW, it is quite likely that WhatsNewDigest is at least indirectly responsible - it is going to be the number one source of bulk email sends from your site and generates a significant volume of email traffic.

If your mailing list isn't already clean and you aren't already restricting who receives the digest emails - you are naturally going to get a lot of complaints or bounces from each send.

Here is a chart of my daily sending reputation on SparkPost - it drops most Sundays when my digest emails go out and I get an increase in bounces/complaints:

View attachment 299409

I don't think the emails being sent are themselves invalid - they should all have the one-click unsubscribe header added (make sure you are running XF 2.2.15 and WND 5.0.6) - it will be the volume of emails and who they are being sent to that will be the issue.
Thanks for the reply. Do bounces & spam reports from the digest emails get handled properly?
 
Thanks for the reply. Do bounces & spam reports from the digest emails get handled properly?

It simply uses the standard XF mail sending infrastructure - so any bounces & spam reports that XF can handle are handled for digest emails as well.
 
I think it may be interesting to investigate if xenforo core bounce processing handles SES bounces and SES complaints well. Previously it did not. To accurately classify these SES bounces is quite complex due to the diversity . @DragonByte Tech developed accurate processing of SES bounces for me for xf1 to resolve this issue. I do not know how well xf 2.2 processes SES complaints if at all. I know that until recently xenforo didn't handle SES bounces well. I don't know if recent changes have changed this.

I would expect that the high number of bounces as a natural result of a what's new digest coupled with potential inaccurate handling of bounces may impact SES reputation score.
 
Finally - I don't know if AWS has any kind of suppression list functionality?

Do bounces & spam reports from the digest emails get handled properly?
I know that until recently xenforo didn't handle SES bounces well. I don't know if recent changes have changed this.
Regardless of this, SES default is to add bouncing and complaint recipients into your account level suppression list, so that any emails sent from XF (or other sources) though your SES account will not be sent/delivered to email addresses that have bounced or complained. Access/review your account (and configuration-sets lists if you want to get sophisticated) suppression list via SES console and Configuration | Supression List

Screenshot 2024-03-11 at 11.23.56.webp

I too would be interested in stats of XF bounce handling when using SES, but feel quite confident it's working well and appropriately. My email bounce log appears to align well with SES suppression list, and activity dates on XF bounce log align well with WND sending dates.
 
2 feature suggestions....

1. On the /admin.php?tools/whatsnewdigest-test page it would be great if the Test Type: List Users output gave the following:

a. Block header includes count of users, eg. "327 users who will receive the weekly email"

b. Underneath the block container listing users, show the count of excluded users based on options/groups/whatsnewdigest/ settings. Eg.

100 users excluded due to setting Only send to users opting to receive news and update emails
200 users excluded due to setting Recently Active Users Only
10 user excluded due to setting Exclude Discouraged Users

2. Add a /admin.php?logs/whatsnewdigest/ page that gives entries for the cron sending actions. Similar in display to the /admin.php?logs/email-bounces. Eg.

DateTypeRecipients
30 mins agoWeekly327
The recipients hyperlink then gives a list, showing username and email address, of the recipients of that send

Question ...

My /admin.php?options/groups/whatsnewdigest/ default frequency is monthly. Going to /admin.php?tools/whatsnewdigest-test for List Users | Monthly, the output users listed is only 200 shown which is a lot less than actual. Is the output list being constrained (intentionally or bug?) to only 200 users? Does that mean the email would only be sent to those 200 users, or the much larger quantity that applies?
 
My /admin.php?options/groups/whatsnewdigest/ default frequency is monthly. Going to /admin.php?tools/whatsnewdigest-test for List Users | Monthly, the output users listed is only 200 shown which is a lot less than actual. Is the output list being constrained (intentionally or bug?) to only 200 users? Does that mean the email would only be sent to those 200 users, or the much larger quantity that applies?

Yes, it is hard coded to only show the first 200 - because it was intended to be a simple test rather than a comprehensive list and I didn't want to go to the trouble of implementing paging to show more.

I'm not sure what the use-case is for showing more than 200 users here?

More user count stats would definitely be useful.
 
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