Mailing Features

creativepart · February 1st, 2013, 09:00 AM

PP Classifieds needs mailing features. The kind of thing that would let an admin send group emails to everyone that has a current ad in the product.

It could be used to create a newsletter.
I could be used to send all sellers a scammer warning

Similar to the VB mailing features.

It would be good for admin to be able to communicate with every seller all at once. But it must be protected so scammers can't hijack the system and group mail sellers.

Chuck S · February 1st, 2013, 09:39 AM

I would have to look at my vb to see what you mean I do not remember seeing some special mailing section in my admin panel.

creativepart · February 1st, 2013, 09:58 AM

In VB you can create a mailing list -- it's in the Users section > Generate Mailing List.

You can create any delimiter you wish. Then the list of users generated can be used with a mail client on your desktop or a 3rd party mailing service.

But it would be great if we could mail everyone with an ad directly with some notice or warning.

Before upgrading to 5.23 we had a lot of scammers doing this. They could send an email to everyone in out classifieds, and slug in the item title into the email. They could do it... but we couldn't.

That seems to be prevented by the captcha in 5.23 on the email contact process.

Chuck S · February 1st, 2013, 10:23 AM

Yes the captcha does seem to catch alot of spammers but will never catch a spammer who is a real live person.

Chuck S · February 9th, 2013, 12:48 PM

FYI in the standalone product you can email a user or all users. That option is under the edit users portion of classifieds admin panel that only appears if it is a standalone. Otherwise when your integrated with another product and all the users are in that product any user management is done in the forum where the users come from.

creativepart · February 9th, 2013, 12:57 PM

I think you misunderstand. I'm asking for the ability to email all users with a current ad in Classifieds via the admin panel. Or to be able to export the email address of members with a current ad.

I have 92,000 members. Only 420 of them have ads in Classifieds at this moment. I don't want to email 92,000 people to warn the 420 people with current classified ads that a scammer is operating in the Classifieds today. Or for any other problem that just effects the Classifieds.

It would be an important addition to the Classifieds.

Chuck S · February 9th, 2013, 01:01 PM

Your looking for a very specific target availability and your looking for it to exist in a place where the users do not exist meaning your users come from a forum not our product right?

I do not think something like that would be theoretically possible to be some standard inclusion in a forum integration. Your talking about we would have to query the products table group the results by userid and then issue a query for every user to get there email from the forum database. That means in your case 420 extra queries. That is because the forum and gallery products do not need to exist in the same database.

The only way to do it for it would be something included in our product is for it to be one query and I can definately create an addition case to email users whom have an ad in the standalone classifieds mailer. That would be easy.

Do you understand what I am saying here? I am not going to code something in the application that would take 400 or 1000 queries to complete. Talk about bringing a server to its knees.

creativepart · February 9th, 2013, 01:08 PM

Yes, I realize that. But the Classifieds can display all of the members currently with ads (when you click on the memberlist in classifieds, it only shows members with a current ad. It doesn't show all 90,000 members). So, the info contained in their profiles should also be available via the application should it not?

Chuck S · February 9th, 2013, 01:13 PM

We can do that because a users username and userid exist on the ad table not there forum profile stuff

creativepart · February 9th, 2013, 01:15 PM

Doesn't having the userid make it possible to pull their email address? The application does so all the time in the "Contact Seller" routine.

creativepart · February 9th, 2013, 01:15 PM

It would be a "contact all sellers" kind of Admin function.

Chuck S · February 9th, 2013, 01:25 PM

You misunderstand what I am saying. We know we can pull the information I said we could. What I am saying as my reply clearly stated in my last reply was to do something like you want since the user info exists on the forum. You first have to issue a query to only get userids in the products table and then issue a query on the forum database to get there email.

That in your case is 421 queries for that function. See in a standalone classifieds where everything is in one database I can issue one query to the products table with a left join on the users table to get the email. See what I mean now.

I can do the same thing even with the forum user table if things existed in the same database. However the forum tables is not always in the same database as the classifieds tables and the query to left join whatever forum user table would be different in every last integration there is.

What I am saying is I can not include something in the application as standard if:

1. It would not work for everbody

2. It would create too much server overhead.

I can do something like you want for a standalone classifieds thats easy. If I can think of a way to do it for forum integrations I will see but do not expect some answer for 5.3

creativepart · February 9th, 2013, 01:30 PM

OK, thanks. I was hopping a "contact all sellers" would be something possible to add. If you can find of a practical way it would be another great addition to the program.

Chuck S · February 9th, 2013, 01:33 PM

Yes keep the ideas coming. If I can think of a way to do it we shall see I just can not add something that intensive without being able to do it with one or two queries.