Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Cron based e-mail sending

As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.

In default vBulletin, if you send a large number of e-mails, vbulletin either puts them in it's queue and attempts to send them as each user visits a page, or just simply tries to send them straight away (as is the case when you use the Administrators email users inteface).

The result of this can be that your server can gets seriously overloaded very quickly - or on many hosts, you get banned for exceeding their e-mail sending limits. This can make sending several thousand e-mails (like a newsletter) very difficult.

This modification does two things ;

1. The processing of the mail queue is set-up as a vbulletin cron item.

2. Allows you to add a small delay before each e-mail is sent (between 1 and 9 seconds).

3. E-mails from the ACP inteface are sent to the mail queue, not straight to the mail system.

Use option 2 carefully, otherwise you will slow your e-mail system right down.

For this to work, you must turn on e-mail queuing in the ACP options - set 'Use Mailqueue System' to 'Yes', and 'Number of Emails to Send Per Batch' to a realistic value (based on the cron setting, as below).

There are two options for the cron job, you can either set it to run every minute, and set the items to be processed to something small (like 10), or you can do what this modification does by default and set it to run every 10 minutes, and set the items to be processed to something larger (like 100).

Remember, 10 per minute = 600 per hour, 100 per 10 minutes is also 600 per hour. The numbers really depend on how quick you want large queues processed, and how much your mail server can handle in one go.

Once working, when using the ACP mail users inteface, remember you can set it to process 9999 at once (not 500 or whatever) as the mails will now go into the queue, not be sent directly.

Note: This modification will affect any queued e-mails such as subscription e-mails. It will not affect registration e-mails as they bypass queuing anyway.

This modification includes the code by Antivirus that displays the current size of the mail queue.


History:

v3.8.001 : First Release for vB 3.8.

[Paul M]

You can manually run the cron in your acp as many times as you want.

[TurkeySub]

Very awesome!

Works like a charm!

[Griffoneur]

Will you be supporting v4.0?

I rely on your program for emailing users as I am limited to 400 emails per hour.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Griffoneur

Will you be supporting v4.0?

Yes.

[Griffoneur]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Yes.

That is great. E-mails are a BIG issue with many forums. Your plugin is probably one of the most used on my site.

Looking forward to its release.

Norman

[the stig]

Mr. Paul M,

After installing this mod, members of my forum are complaining that they are NOT

a. receiving any subscription email
b. receiving any pm notificaiton email

what do you think is going on? the number set to 5 btw.

thanks

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by the stig

what do you think is going on?

I cannot possibly guess at what is happening on your site.

[joe1989]

Perhaps he is using 4.0?? The_stig... this mod is not compatible with 4.0 (yet), so if you are running 4.0, you need to disable this mod in the ACP --> Plugins and Products.

Regards,
Joe

[the stig]

Originally Posted by Paul M

I cannot possibly guess at what is happening on your site.

I have no clue what's going on . My vb software is pretty much stock. Almost no modification done to it. I don't know why it's not working. MEmbers are not receiving any emails whatsoever. I found out today that I'm not receiving "contact us" emails either .

Originally Posted by joe1989

Perhaps he is using 4.0?? The_stig... this mod is not compatible with 4.0 (yet), so if you are running 4.0, you need to disable this mod in the ACP --> Plugins and Products.

Regards,
Joe

Hey joe, I have 3.8.4 version.

[Paul M]

Perhaps you need to check your e-mail system, send one from the ACP dianostics page.