Autoresponder for Birthday not working

Comments

• Ben

  May 2013

  Hi Daniel,

  There are no bugs or issues with Autoresponders since it was launched as a new feature a few months ago.

  Is your cron job running every minute? If so, can you verify that your host allows you to run a cron job every minute?

  Thanks.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013 edited May 2013

  Ben,

  My host is an AWS EC2 Ubuntu instance.
  My cronjob is like this:

  */5 * * * * php /var/www/sendy/public_html/scheduled.php > /dev/null 2>&1

  */1 * * * * php /var/www/sendy/public_html/autoresponders.php > /dev/null 2>&1

  */1 * * * * php /var/www/sendy/public_html/import-csv.php > /dev/null 2>&1

  I've setup the timezone to America/Sao_Paulo at the linux shell, php.ini and at Sendy's Control Panel.
  Do you think this can cause a problem?

  Also at the Autoresponder E-mail, I've set it to send annually "on" Birthday date.

  Any tip?
  Thanks
• Ben

  May 2013 edited May 2013

  Hi Daniel,

  Did you save the cronjobs in sudo crontab -e or crontab -e? You must save it in sudo crontab -e.

  Thanks.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Ben,

  I did using: sudo crontab -e

  The scheduled e-mail works right.
  The import-csv works right.
  But the autoresponders don't.

  What time (hour of the day) the birthday mail should be sent? When I set it to send "on" birthday.?

  Thanks
  Daniel Gomes
• Ben

  May 2013

  Hi Daniel,

  The email should be sent at 12am on the set date.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Ben,
  I mannually did some tests diggin into the autoresponders.php file.

  I did add this line: echo $email;
  Just after the $mail->Send(); line.

  It only sends to one e-mail and stops.
  If I comment the //$mail->Send(); line. It goes trough all e-mails...

  Do you have any idea?
  Do you have any debug instructions?

  Thanks
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Ben, Still could not work this out...
  Looks like the method: $mail->Send(); is breaking the loop... So it only sends to the first email, and stops...
• Ben

  May 2013

  Hi Daniel,

  The script should loop through all subscribers that needs an autoresponder to be sent to them, if it breaks at $mail-Send();, either something is wrong, or there are no other subscribers that needs an autoresponder to be sent to them.

  Can you test by creating a Drip Campaign that sends an email immediately when you sign up? Then sign up to that list to see if you receive the autoresponder email?

  Thanks.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Hey Ben,

  I've created a list with four e-mails of mine. All with the same b-day date.
  The Drip Campaign is working well. Jus tested... Deleted all 4 e-mail from the test list and sign up with the 4 again.
  I was thinking this could be any server config issue. What do you think?

  Thanks
  Daniel
• Ben

  May 2013

  Hi Daniel,

  Have you by any chance set your timezone in Settings?

  Thanks.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013

  I did.
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Ben, just find out the problem.
  Although I did set the timezone settings, looks like phpmailer send() method calls this php function: date_default_timezone_set.
  And after the first email is sent, the day for the next ones was changing...
  So it was sending only to the first one.
  To solve I add this line, before set the day and month to compare:

  date_default_timezone_set('America/Sao_Paulo');

  $cf_day = strftime("%d", $custom_fields_array[$i]);
  $cf_month = strftime("%b", $custom_fields_array[$i]);

  Thanks
• Ben

  May 2013

  Thanks Daniel,

  You're right, if 2 subscribers share the same 'Birthday', only one will receive it. You should use this code instead:

  date_default_timezone_set($user_timezone); instead of date_default_timezone_set('America/Sao_Paulo'); so your timezone will be retrieved from whatever you've set in Settings.

  Thanks.

  Ben
• dgomes

  May 2013

  Cool.
  Ben, Another sugestion I would made is to select the birthdays subscribers in Mysql, instead of select all subscribers, and loop through them.
  It would use less CPU and would process faster.

  Thanks
  Daniel