Checking email address before sending

Discussion in 'Customization & add-ons' started by draj, Jan 10, 2007.

  1. draj

    draj New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2006
    Messages:
    252
    Hallo!

    Is it possible theoritically to check an email address before sending an email?

    If yes, this would be interesting for the newsletter mailing area.

    Manytimes email addresses gets invalid and the email comes back. It is a lot of pain to work with the emails that have not been delivered and hunt for the email address or the users.

    If there is a system of checking an email address before sending, it would be possible to insert flags so that the admin can retrace immediately and rather directly from the admin.
  2. alex

    alex aMember Pro Customer Staff Member

    Joined:
    Jan 24, 2004
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    6,021
    Unfortunately, there is no better test for e-mail than to send it.

    It is possible to handle bounces automatically, but it is very complex and hosting -specific to make it standard feature, because 80% of customers will have problems with configuring this function.
  3. draj

    draj New Member

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2006
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    Hi!

    Thanks for your quick reply.

    Well, I may be fully wrong, but I have a vague idea that there is a possibility to make a ping for a valid email address. If exists, then relay. If not, quirk or tell the admin by entering a flag in the database.

    Not many users would have full environment of a server. Exactly thats the reason why I mentioned of this solution, if technically possible.
  4. miso

    miso aMember Pro Customer

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    Aug 22, 2006
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    543
    heck, even adding a return to email for bounces in the config or something would be nice... then you just have to set up an email account to catch all those emails and process them manually once in a while (delete the invalid emails from the database)
  5. calisolllc

    calisolllc Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2007
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    Why don't you try setting up a filter in your email hosting system to send all bounces to a specific email address or filter them to an alternate folder in your email client if your client has that function?
  6. miso

    miso aMember Pro Customer

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2006
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    that's the thing - if you know of a way to set this up on cPanel for a website where the amember is being hosted on, I am all ears, as all the emails are being stored on the server itself ;)
  7. calisolllc

    calisolllc Member

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2007
    Messages:
    194
    Sorry to take so long to get back to you but I didnt notice this question till tonight.
    In Cpanel under the heading of MAIL, there's an option for account level filtering OR user level filtering.
    You could do one of two things.
    1. Set up a filter in user level filtering , to filter out bounces and redirect them to an email address called bounce@yourdomain.com. Bounces can be filtered out by looking for error standard error messages and subjects in bounced emails. If you look up email error codes on the net you will find a list of error messages that are attached to the various types of bounces. You may have to fine tune this over time as different mailservers use different subject headings for bounced emails but they should all use std error codes
    (see http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/tips/codes.html for a list of std email error codes). These codes will appear within the returned emails.

    or alternatively you could

    2. Set up the reply/send address in your emails to noreply@yourdomain.com and all bounces will then come back to that account.
    Either way all your bounces will filter to a single account to make it easier
    You will have to make sure you create either an email account on your host called bounce@yourdomain.com OR noreply@yourdomain.com first

    Steve

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