[Sticky] Membership Database Cleanup

When I sent out the "Welcome Back to MBGT" email blast, we found out a few things:

1. Our web hosting service doesn't allow bulk email blasts - At about 2500 emails sent, they suspended our email sending ability (which we just got back today).  I apologize for those that did not get forum post updates for the last few days.  That functionality has been re-activated.
2. We had a full list of just over 3200 members (apologies to those that did not get the email blast, it was quite professional looking, it's a shame we cannot continue to use the software within the forum to do this; however, we are looking at something else to do this for the odd email blast we may do)
3. Out of the ~2500 emails, we had 388 users open it and 63 open the link.  This is about right as I had close to 2000 bounced emails.

Given the number of bounced emails, I stated to do some digging, and it was crazy.  All kinds of users had been created by bots with email addresses like my-turism.info, analitikaru.info, carnivoreconservation.info, turkishnews20-09-19.info and createyourreality.info. Domains used over and over again.  So I did the following (and I apologize if I accidently deleted someone, I was really, really careful to make sure that no-one that had made a post was deleted):

1. Stripped out all of the obvious users that had .ru, .pl, .info, .store, etc. from the user base (again, no-one that had posts was taken out)
2. Exported the list and ran through it, evaluating what people had put in for descriptions and URLs that dealt with marketing, was not in English, etc.
3. Anyone that had registered over a year ago but had never confirmed their email
4. I then exported the list again and walked through it, cleaning up once more
5. A last export and a last visual run-through

After doing all of that, I have landed on 600 users in the membership database.  Some of these will still not be valid anymore; however, it is a number I can work with.  This is the plan...

1. We will be signing up with a MailChimp to run our occasional email blasts.  They have a simple plan that meets our needs.
2. I will be sending out an individual email to all of the 600 users left in the database.  I will be excluding any user that has clicked on the Unsubscribe link from the Welcome Back to MBGT email blast, so if you do not want to be emailed, please click on that link in the next few days.  I will be doing this work next weekend.
3. The email will have a Subscribe link to our MailChimp and very detailed instructions on how to subscribe to the MBGT Mailing list.  ONLY users that subscribe will be sent emails in the future (this ensures that MBGT follows proper mass mailing guidelines and it keeps our reputation and bounce rate low).
4. We will be adding in a Subscribe/Unsubscribe link to the sidebar on the page to make it easy for people to add and remove themselves from the mailing list.  It will only be available for users that are logged into the site as this is a members-only value-added service that may have specials, links to special events, etc.
5. Any email addresses that bounce will be evaluated to see if they are valid members (logged in within the past two years, have posts, etc.).  If the user has not logged in during the past two years, has no posts, etc.

Let me know if there are any questions, and thanks so much for being a part of Myrtle Beach Golf Talk.  The site is only here because of you.