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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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

[weindians]

ok... thanx for finding out that.... anyway now it has sent more mails as queue reduced to 3200+

[FreshFroot]

Originally Posted by Paul M

The cron runs 6 times an hour (every 10 minutes), so 50 x 6 = 300 an hour, well under your 500/Hr - you are fine.

THIS ABOVE...

should be in your intro post.

I was looking for this to see how this work to add my setting...

No wonder users are confused...

You need to remember more than half the people here are NOT programmers. So they won't understand some of your terms. They just need straight answers

[maznos]

Hello,

Does this hack work under 4.x

[SVTCobraLTD]

Installed on 3.8.x but does not seem to be working correctly. Emails are all going out at once with no regard to my setting of only 40 per batch.

[Paul M]

Which would suggest you missed doing something.

[SVTCobraLTD]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Which would suggest you missed doing something.

Upload 1 item and import another. I don't see how that can be missed?

[Paul M]

So you read this, and did it ?

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).

[SVTCobraLTD]

I read the instructions you provided with the download and that is not stated anywhere.....

<!-- $Header: d:\cvs/3.8/Cron-mail-queue/Cron-mail-queue.txt,v 1.1 2008/10/05 15:15:58 pem Exp $ -->


Cron Mail Queue for vBulletin 3.8
---------------------------------


Step 1.

In admincp/email.php

find ;

vbmail($user['email'], $vbulletin->GPC['subject'], $sendmessage, true, $vbulletin->GPC['from']);

change to ;

vbmail($user['email'], $vbulletin->GPC['subject'], $sendmessage, false, $vbulletin->GPC['from']); // Paul M - Queue Admin Mail //



Step 2.

In includes/functions.php

find ;

exec_mail_queue();

change to ;

// exec_mail_queue(); // Paul M - Cron Mail Queue Hack //



Step 3.

Upload mailqueue.php to /includes/cron/



Step 4.

Import the product into vBulletin via the ACP Product Manager.

[SVTCobraLTD]

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).

This is done with "Yes with locking" chosen and the value set to 40. Still all emails go through right away.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by SVTCobraLTD

I read the instructions you provided with the download and that is not stated anywhere.....

Its in the main post of the thread.

Originally Posted by SVTCobraLTD

This is done with "Yes with locking" chosen and the value set to 40. Still all emails go through right away.

Im afraid there is nothing more I can tell you. Without admin and ftp access I cannot check you have done everything correctly.