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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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

[final kaoss]

Well in your last post you said this. And this makes it sound like the Daily & Weekly digest emails are not being sent out by the mod.

Originally Posted by Paul M

What do you mean by "not handling" ? - this has no direct link with Digest cron jobs.

[Paul M]

As the description says, this handles anything in the vb mail queue.

Do the digest jobs put e-mails in the vb queue ? If they do then this will process them. (I have no idea without digging into their code, but Id be very surprised if they didnt).

[Log on]

Originally Posted by Paul M

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

I did it .. but still dosen't work every min ?!!!

[Paul M]

It does if youve set it correctly (and you have enough forum activity of course).

[tafreeh]

i made, the file changes instructed in the downloaded file...

and when i click send email i get this

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '}' in /home/user/public_html/admincp/email.php on line 226

on white page...


However i did upload the xml file, but couldnt find any option in vbulletin option at Admincp

I got more than 36,000 users, and i have to send an important email to everyone.. so i think i need this mod.... in order to prevent getting blacklisted.

Thanks

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by tafreeh

i made, the file changes instructed in the downloaded file...

and when i click send email i get this

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '}' in /home/user/public_html/admincp/email.php on line 226

on white page...

Then you made an error in the edit.

Originally Posted by tafreeh

However i did upload the xml file, but couldnt find any option in vbulletin option at Admincp

Where are you looking ?

[tafreeh]

yea there was a line missinge from email.php... now its all good.

Thanks allot

[final kaoss]

I forced the cronjob to send the mail so no, theres no mail in the queue

and /home/vgchat/mail 45 has always been at 45 at hasn't gone up by an increment since test.

K made a test account and

SMTP: mail.vgchat.info:26
SMTP Username: test@vgchat.info

Help
Results
No errors were returned while attempting to send the email. Check avalanch07@gmail.com shortly to confirm you've received the email. If you don't receive the email, try sending the test to a different address. If that fails, check your mail server's configuration.

no mail received though...

EDIT solved.

[vitrag24]

update for vb 4.0?
Thx.

[Paul M]

Just look in my profile.