What's New Digest 5.0.6

[MaximilianKohler]

I searched this thread and saw that members are automatically subscribed if they have "Receive news and update emails" checked in their preferences.

In the options, the "default" Default Frequency is set to Weekly - which effectively makes it opt-out and means that everyone who has not explicitly chosen to not receive the emails by setting their personal preference to None (or Daily) will receive the weekly emails.

Change the "Default Frequency" to None which makes it opt-in and means that it will only send to members who have explicitly chosen to receive the daily or weekly emails.

Similarly, if they choose to receive emails and you have a default frequency set - then they will receive the digest email even if they haven't subscribed to them.

But when I ran this tool there were 0 results:

Oh, nvm, it was because I had "test mode" checked in /admin.php?add-ons/Hampel-WhatsNewDigest/options.

Nice addon, thank you!

 

[MaximilianKohler]

Could this https://xenforo.com/community/threa...lid-for-bounced-addresses.218530/post-1663838 be a problem with your addon? Those emails were sent by this digest.

 

[Stuart Wright]

@Sim thanks for this great, free addon.
I have a suggestion on how to improve it and improve member participation with the received emails.
My idea is to allow members to choose what forums they get their selected threads picked from using a multiple selection drop-down of the forums.

As an aside, at the moment, you have admin enter the list of forum IDs of forums to exclude from the digest

It would be better to have a multiple selection drop-down of the forums. Would be that hard to change this?

Anyway, my suggestion is that in the user preferences page, we present members with a multiple selection of the forums. We use this selection method in Tag Essentials.

and if you want, I can send you it so you can copy the code. Except you'd have to apply permissions to only show the forums that the user has access to view threads in and that have not been globally excluded by admin.
You could use the same selector for members and for admin when selecting which forums to exclude globally from the digest.

Now I appreciate that this would make the processing of the digests more intensive because they would be selecting threads from specific forums for all those members who have selected them.
But the digest email they receive would get more clicks because it would contain threads which they are more interested in.
What do you think?

 

[Robert9]

Can we have one more options, please?
Instead number of threads, i could be

• Number of new threads (0 means none!)
• Number of updated threads (0 means none!)

Another idea could be:

Fill new with updated or fill updated with new?

Because I want to show 30 new threads, but if I have only 28 new threads, i can show 2 updated threads to have a list of 30 threads.

 

[Sim]

Could this https://xenforo.com/community/threa...lid-for-bounced-addresses.218530/post-1663838 be a problem with your addon? Those emails were sent by this digest.

This addon does nothing special to the emails - it simply uses the core mail functionality to send emails to users.

However, it does significantly increase the number of emails that get sent from your forum - which would typically come with a higher number of bounces as a result.

Here is a chart showing my sending activity via my SparkPost account over the past 30 days from one of my sites - you can clearly see the weekly spikes in sending - this is all from the digest emails I'm sending:



As a general suggestion, I highly recommend that you leave the "Recently Active Users Only" option turned on, otherwise you'll be sending digest emails to users who may not have visited your site in years, which will result in a lot of additional bounced emails and potentially an increase in spam complaints.

 

[Sim]

As an aside, at the moment, you have admin enter the list of forum IDs of forums to exclude from the digest
View attachment 296933
It would be better to have a multiple selection drop-down of the forums. Would be that hard to change this?

I simply figured that the amount of work required to program a dynamic selection box in the admin options vs a comma separated list for something that is unlikely to change very frequently (if at all), wasn't worth the effort

Anyway, my suggestion is that in the user preferences page, we present members with a multiple selection of the forums. We use this selection method in Tag Essentials.

and if you want, I can send you it so you can copy the code. Except you'd have to apply permissions to only show the forums that the user has access to view threads in and that have not been globally excluded by admin.
You could use the same selector for members and for admin when selecting which forums to exclude globally from the digest.

Now I appreciate that this would make the processing of the digests more intensive because they would be selecting threads from specific forums for all those members who have selected them.
But the digest email they receive would get more clicks because it would contain threads which they are more interested in.
What do you think?

We're already filtering threads sent to each user based on their individual permissions, so to further filter them based on a user selected list of forums wouldn't be a problem.

This is likely to be something I'll want to implement for ZooChat once I get the site upgraded (still on v1.5 !!) because we have over 100 forum topics, including many country-specific topics which are unlikely to be of interest to some users.

It's not something I'll have time to do in the short term (still focused on getting my two big sites upgraded to 2.x), but I'll definitely look at it once those upgrades are done.

 

[thumped]

ErrorException​

Message: Job Hampel\WhatsNewDigest:SendDigest: [E_WARNING] Undefined array key "unsubscribeEmailAddress"
File: src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Job/SendDigest.php:224


version 5.0.5 on 2.2.14 patch 2

 

[Sim]

ErrorException​

Message: Job Hampel\WhatsNewDigest:SendDigest: [E_WARNING] Undefined array key "unsubscribeEmailAddress"
File: src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Job/SendDigest.php:224


version 5.0.5 on 2.2.14 patch 2

This is what happens when @Chris D releases new functionality in a minor point release without any chance for 3rd parties to test things - it breaks addons because that's a core option that got removed

 

[Sim]

Sim updated What's New Digest with a new update entry:

5.0.6 fixes for XF 2.2.14

XenForo 2.2.14 adds new functionality for adding one-click unsubscribe headers to emails. Unfortunately, the code released in 2.2.14PL2 breaks functionality by removing a core option.

This release of WND fixes the errors by relying on XF 2.2.14 to set the headers for us - which should work in the majority of cases.

Note: if you are not planning to upgrade to XF 2.2.14 yet, I recommend you do not install v5.0.6 of this addon. Installing 5.0.6 with XF 2.2.13 or earlier won't break...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Sim]

ErrorException​

Message: Job Hampel\WhatsNewDigest:SendDigest: [E_WARNING] Undefined array key "unsubscribeEmailAddress"
File: src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Job/SendDigest.php:224


version 5.0.5 on 2.2.14 patch 2

Please install 5.0.6 to fix the errors introduced in XF 2.2.14

 

[MaximilianKohler]

Note: if you are not planning to upgrade to XF 2.2.14 yet, I recommend you do not install v5.0.6 of this addon. Installing 5.0.6 with XF 2.2.13 or earlier won't break anything - but the one-click unsubscribe headers won't be added to your digest emails, which is not ideal.

I checked, and the emails sent out by this addon do not have the list-unsubscribe header. Does it have to do with the fact that I'm using the SES addon instead of a dedicated bounce email? https://xenforo.com/community/threads/amazon-ses-bounces-support.192673/post-1665381

 

[Sim]

I checked, and the emails sent out by this addon do not have the list-unsubscribe header. Does it have to do with the fact that I'm using the SES addon instead of a dedicated bounce email? https://xenforo.com/community/threads/amazon-ses-bounces-support.192673/post-1665381

XF adds list-unsubscribe headers automatically now as part of the core - so if they are being stripped by something like your SES addon, that's something you'd need to look at for that addon.

What version of XF and the WhatsNewDigest are you running?

 

[MaximilianKohler]

XF v2.2.13. What's New Digest 5.0.5.

 

[Sim]

XF v2.2.13. What's New Digest 5.0.5.

WND 5.0.5 added its own unsubscribe headers.

However, there was a bug with the tool I built to send test emails where it wasn't adding the headers - so if you're looking at the test email, that's a known issue which I've fixed in 5.0.6 (but don't upgrade yet)

 

[Sim]

Note that Chris has announced a new 2.2.15 release out shortly which will address some of the issues introduced in 2.2.14, so please hold off upgrading to 2.2.14 and to What's New Digest 5.0.6 until I've had a chance to investigate the new version tomorrow.

I'll post an update here if I'm happy that 5.0.6 will work with 2.2.15 - or if I need to release a new version.

 

[MaximilianKohler]

so if you're looking at the test email

I'm not using test emails. But it also happens for emails that are not sent out by your addon so it's likely not your fault https://xenforo.com/community/threads/amazon-ses-bounces-support.192673/page-9#post-1665616

 

[MaximilianKohler]

I just upgraded to XF v2.15 and What's New Digest 5.0.6 and all my emails now have the list-unsubscribe headers. Thanks!

 

[Stuart Wright]

@Sim I've disabled 5.0.6 of this addon for a while to determine whether it's responsible for the high complaint rate that we've been seeing and the Amazon SES subsequent notices we've received. I'll get back to you on our findings.
Meanwhile, I'm getting these server errors:

Server error log

• InvalidArgumentException: Container key 'whatsnewdigest.log' was not found
• src/XF/Container.php:46
• Generated by: Unknown account
• Mar 9, 2024 at 11:05 AM

Stack trace​

#0 src/XF/App.php(2508): XF\Container->offsetGet('whatsnewdigest....')
#1 src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Cron/SendDigest.php(71): XF\App->get('whatsnewdigest....')
#2 src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Cron/SendDigest.php(25): Hampel\WhatsNewDigest\Cron\SendDigest::logger()
#3 src/addons/Hampel/WhatsNewDigest/Cron/SendDigest.php(15): Hampel\WhatsNewDigest\Cron\SendDigest::sendDigest('weekly')
#4 src/XF/Job/Cron.php(37): Hampel\WhatsNewDigest\Cron\SendDigest::sendWeeklyDigest(Object(XF\Entity\CronEntry))
#5 src/XF/Job/Manager.php(260): XF\Job\Cron->run(8)
#6 src/XF/Job/Manager.php(202): XF\Job\Manager->runJobInternal(Array, 8)
#7 src/XF/Job/Manager.php(86): XF\Job\Manager->runJobEntry(Array, 8)
#8 job.php(43): XF\Job\Manager->runQueue(false, 8)
#9 {main}

Request state​

array(4) {
["url"] => string(8) "/job.php"
["referrer"] => string(54) "https://www.avforums.com/forums/blu-ray-dvd-discs.168/"
["_GET"] => array(0) {
}
["_POST"] => array(0) {
}
}

Obviously there shouldn't be any server errors from the addon when it's disabled.
Please help.

 

[Sim]

Obviously there shouldn't be any server errors from the addon when it's disabled.

Where there any jobs in the queue when you disabled the addon? If so, the system will still be trying to execute the jobs but can't find the addon code because it is disabled.

 

[Sim]

@Sim I've disabled 5.0.6 of this addon for a while to determine whether it's responsible for the high complaint rate that we've been seeing and the Amazon SES subsequent notices we've received. I'll get back to you on our findings.

Two settings for WhatsNewDigest you may want to check are:



Enabling the "Only send to users opting to receive news and update emails" will greatly restrict who receives the digest emails - especially if you don't have the "Receive news and update emails" option turned on by default for new member profiles.

More importantly, the "Recently Active Users Only" option is going to restrict emails to users who have been active in the last 180 days (forum default option), which will avoid trying to send to users who signed up years ago and may consider emails you send them now to be spam. This option should definitely be turned on.

Finally - I don't know if AWS has any kind of suppression list functionality?

On SparkPost, any user whose emails bounce back as undelieverable or who make a spam complaint - get automatically placed on a suppression list so that you cannot send further emails to that user. This avoids one of the main reputation-damaging issue of repeated sends to invalid (or complaining) addresses.

It's fairly sophisticated because it differentiates between transactional and non-transactional emails, which means that if someone complains about a digest email and so gets placed on the non-transactional suppression list, they can still receive transactional emails like password resets.

I find this suppression list system works really well to maintain a high sending reputation.

The other thing to keep in mind is if you're receiving a large number of bogus/automated account registrations using temporary email addresses - the system might be trying to send digest emails to these new users but they bounce back as undeliverable because the address is no longer valid?