7SiN

Using IP.SEO now. Finally got it to work the other day. Going to monitor it over the next couple of days to make sure it's creating them properly.

I'd really love to see some automated method to handle email bounce backs. It's a problem which everyone comes across, and the larger a community becomes the bigger the problem. While we can manually update every single user when their email address becomes invalid, sorting through every Delivery Failed message can eventually become a timely process. I believe having a standard, automated method would encourage usage, and go a small way to helping reduce the amount of wasted mail traffic out there.

If such a feature was implement, I think the implimentation would need to be carefully chosen by the general level of customisation would roughly follow:

1) Ability to set threshold at which point a user's email is marked is invalid. Perhaps 3 bounced emails by default

2) Different actions possible to apply to a user when their address becomes invalid. Examples:
a) Account marked to receive no further emails
b) Account usergroup changed to email verification

2a seems a friendlier way to handle the process, as it doesn't completely remove their posting rights which may be frustrating, but it would cause any email designated/generated for that user to stay in some kind of IPB mail queue. Or for the email to not be generated at all. The user would be notified of the need to update their email address by, for example, a strip along the top of each page.

I think this offers a fair choice for communities who want to completely enforce someone having a valid email address at all time, and communities who would simply prefer not to continue sending emails to addresses which have become defunct.

I know processing bounce backs for validity would be complicated (perhaps certain tracking headers, and hope they're actually bounced back entirely), but it's a feature I've wanted to see for a long, long time in all community software solutions out there.

There is a plugin for vbulletin 3.X series called vbouncer.

It sets a return path for all emails sent out by the forums, then using a cron job checked that email for bounces daily and can take different actions such as turn off all email notifications for a user, or set them back to unconfirmed status depending on the number of bounces received in a specified time period.

I've used it for years on many different server configurations, and it really works very well. I would think it can't be that hard to port over to IPB.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added it to my list for the next version, which I'll try to release early next month.

Ah yeah, that's a better way to disable notifications, if you're having problems with them. I assume you unselected the options next to "Notify me when I receive feedback"?

Again, hopefully the issue will be resolved at the next IPB release.