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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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

[viper357]

Quick question Paul, if you don't mind.

I have just upgraded from vb 3.6.12 to vb 3.8.4, I had both yours and antivirus's hacks installed on my 3.6.12 board. Now that I have upgraded please advise if these will be the correct steps to follow for your hack?

1. Uninstall antivurs hack
2. Install current version of your hack without uninstalling the old version?

Thanks.

[Paul M]

I would uninstall both, then install this.

[viper357]

OK, thanks.

[yoyoman]

Originally Posted by Paul M

TRUNCATE Mailqueue ;

Hi everybody!
Today I had a problem - accidentally sent the wrong e-mail to all users. Needed to cancel it.
I recommend 3 steps in such situations:
1. admincp->scheduled tasks->uncheck mailqueue
2. admincp->sql query->type in: TRUNCATE TABLE mailqueue;
3. admincp->scheduled tasks->switch mailqueue back on

See you!

[jet rex]

Emails - is a biggest problem in my server.
Thanks !

[Log on]

I couldn't adjusete it to run every min... I don't know whats going on ?

would you tell me please how I can adjuste it

[Paul M]

Why do you want to run it every minute ?

[Log on]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Why do you want to run it every minute ?

coz I want to send from the Q every min 14 messages...

coz my hosting ruls is

1- only 35 recipients per message.
2- only 750 messages per hour.

how I can adjuset it ?!

Please help me


Reagrds

[Paul M]

Edit the cron to run every minute (* in all the time fields).

[krimesis]

Perhaps I misread the whole post but need to send emails to all users?
I tried to load everything and the only difference I noticed was on the email options:

E-Mail Send Delay
The number of seconds delay before sending each e-mail. Note that values greater than 9 seconds will be ignored.