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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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

I dont need to test it, just look at the registration code.

Activation e-mails (to members) are not queued. All that gets queued is New User Notification e-mails.

There is no problem to solve.

[nohuhu]

Paul M,

russian translation for your must-have mod.

[LAJAURIA]

I can't find where I can change the options in the ACP.

[plothook]

Just thought I'd mention:
The scheduled task this product creates is titled "Process Mail Queue for vBulletin 3.7"
The title has no real effect, but it's an easy fix

[Paul M]

Yeah, See posts #56 & #57.

[Makaveli007]

i get a parse error in functions.php everytime. i edited EXACTLY as the instructions stated. there are actually two parts in functions.php that has the exec_mail_queue();

one is functions exec_mail_queue() and then further down is exec_mail_queue(); (with an ; at the end)

i changed the one with the ; exactly as the instructions stated and got the parse error. i then tried every possible combination of changing/not changing the two instances of exec_mail_queue(); and got the parse error every time.

am i doing something wrong?

p.s. parse error was on line 944 everytime

[2zoo]

i tried this before and its working perfectly
thanks

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Makaveli007

i get a parse error in functions.php everytime. i edited EXACTLY as the instructions stated. there are actually two parts in functions.php that has the exec_mail_queue();

one is functions exec_mail_queue() and then further down is exec_mail_queue(); (with an ; at the end)

i changed the one with the ; exactly as the instructions stated and got the parse error. i then tried every possible combination of changing/not changing the two instances of exec_mail_queue(); and got the parse error every time.

am i doing something wrong?

p.s. parse error was on line 944 everytime

The instructions do not say "Function exec_mail_queue()" they only say "exec_mail_queue()" - this is almost at the end of the file. Changing anything else is likely to cause errors.

[marshal_ramdev]

thanks

[thincom2000]

I was getting a MySQL timeout error when sending only - count it - 1 email via a Report Post form. Fixed it by replacing the mail_send plugin. This edit also makes it possible to use this mod with no file edits:

if ($this->registry->options['usemailqueue'] AND get_class($this) == 'vB_Mail')
{
	$qmail =& vB_QueueMail::fetch_instance();
	$qmail->toemail = $this->toemail;
	$qmail->subject = $this->subject;
	$qmail->message = $this->message;
	$qmail->headers = $this->headers;
	$qmail->fromemail = $this->fromemail;
	$qmail->delimiter = $this->delimiter;
	$qmail->registry = $this->registry;
	$qmail->debug = $this->debug;
	$qmail->log = $this->log;
	$qmail->send();
	unset($qmail);

	$this->toemail = '';
}
else
{
	$delay = intval($vbulletin->options['cmqdelay']);
	if ($delay > 0 AND $delay < 10)
	{
		sleep($delay);
	}
}

Also create a plugin at hook global_shutdown with the following code:

$vbulletin->mailqueue = null;