Automatic emails before account expiration

Hi Jerry,

It's always a bit tricky to send emails at set intervals and track it, but here's one way:

- You add a checkbox called: preExpiryReminderSent
- And add a checkbox called: expiryReminderSent
- You make a php script that runs as a cronjob once daily
- You load all the users where (this is pseudo-code):
(expiryDate - x days) < NOW AND preExpiryReminderSent != 1
and for each user send an email and then set the preExpiryReminderSent =1
- Then load all the users where (this is pseudo-code):
(expiryDate) < NOW AND expiryReminderSent != 1
and for each user send an email and then set the expiryReminderSent =1
- Then when they renew set both those checkboxes to 0

Note: When testing email code, test it well and output the results to the screen first with "Sending reminder to email@example.com" so you can work out any bugs without spamming your users.

Hope that helps!

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your expert guidance on this. I got the function to work perfectly, members are now reminded 30 and 7 days before their expiration date, and I've learned a lot about cron jobs.

However, when the cron job runs, I get the following errors in the cron daemon report, and I'm not sure how to approach eliminating them. Hope you've got some more of your masterful insights to share.

X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.17
Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8


Notice: Undefined index: SCRIPT_FILENAME in /hsphere/local/home/apbcweb/artistsofpalmbeachcounty.org/cmsAdmin/plugins/createPDF/createPDF.php on line 22

Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_HOST in /hsphere/local/home/apbcweb/artistsofpalmbeachcounty.org/cmsAdmin/plugins/createPDF/createPDF.php on line 23

Notice: Undefined index: SCRIPT_NAME in /hsphere/local/home/apbcweb/artistsofpalmbeachcounty.org/cmsAdmin/plugins/createPDF/createPDF.php on line 23

Notice: Undefined variable: _SESSION in /hsphere/local/home/apbcweb/artistsofpalmbeachcounty.org/cmsAdmin/lib/login_functions.php on line 88

Thanks,

Jerry Kornbluth

Hi Jerry,

For the PHP headers, are you able to specify the command line that calls the cronjob script? If so you can add -q to supress PHP's HTTP headers. Like this:
php -q /path/to/script.php

That should remove the powered by and content type headers.

For the PHP notices, a workaround might be to edit /lib/init.php and add this line just above "// define constants"

error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE); // show all errors but notices

// define constants

Let me know if those work for you.