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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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.

[voglermc]

I had this in 3.8 and would love to see it in 4.0! Thanks Paul

[the stig]

Originally Posted by Paul M

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

I did and the email works. Members are saying that they are receiving pm and thread subscription emails from 2-3 days ago , just NOW!

I am now forced to move to a new VPS server .

[the stig]

Paul, is there a way I can remove "contact us' from the bottom of the page?

It's not sending ANY emails from here so I would like to know if I can delete temporarily.

[Sworm]

When we can use your great mod on vb4?

[vitrag24]

I hope this will be updated for vb 4.0 soon.
Thanks.

[Paul M]

It already has

[Sworm]

Oh wow,

and where can be downloaded?

I have tried to use 3.8.001 on previous vb4 beta , but the queue is never empty and the emails are not sended..... Do u have released some upgrade?

[Paul M]

Just look in my profile, and you will find it in the vb4 section.

[the stig]

Originally Posted by 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

Originally Posted by the stig

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 .



Hey joe, I have 3.8.4 version.

Originally Posted by Paul M

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

Originally Posted by Paul M

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

Paul M, I fixed the problem (vb 3.8.4 ). I put 5 email in the batches instead of 60 or 80. Yesterday I had 33,000 emails in the queue! Well, it's finally going now since I changed the value. It's at 24,000 now thank god. Good modification. Thanks for posting. A MUST have for ALL shared hosting vb owner.

I will say one thing though, EVEN if you turn this modification off, you NO LONGER receive emails directly from vb. I turned the mod off , I still didn't receive any email. Also, you mentioned in original post that registration emails are bypassed. But during the queue, I didn't receive "contact us" email (i'm receiving them now) and new user notification (i'm receiving them now) ..weird

[Paul M]

Turning it off is not sufficient, you also need to reverse the file edits, otherwise you wont get queued emails.