Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Cron Based E-Mail Sending

This modification is no longer available or supported.

In default vBulletin if you send a large number of e-mails, vbulletin either puts them in it's queue and then attempts to send them as each user visits a page, or just simply tries to send them straight away (This is the case when you use the Administrators email users inteface).

As a result of this your server can become seriously overloaded very quickly - so sending several thousand e-mails (like a newsletter) can become very difficult (hours spent clicking 'next' in the ACP) - as a result of these problems, this very simple modification was born.

This modification does two things ;

1. E-mails from the ACP inteface are sent to the mail queue, not straight to the mail system.

2. The processing of the mail queue is set-up as a vb cron item.

Obviously 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 realisitc 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 (v3.7.002 onwards).

Version 3.7.003 has the option to add a small delay before each e-mail is sent (between 1 and 9 seconds). Use this option carefully.



History:

v3.7.001 : First Release for vB 3.7
v3.7.002 : Added mail queue size display code.
v3.7.003 : Added option for a delay between the sending of each e-mail.

[StonePilot]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Its displayed in the ACP.

Where is this shown in the ACP? I've got 7500 emails to send out.

[Paul M]

On the main index page, above the Administrator Notes.

[yahoooh]

does this effect the sending e-mail function for addon like : vba links and vbgallery?

[FLASHYAN]

thanks pro

but if i do what u talk like :


how to abort or Cancel this Process when i want ??

[jw00dy]

I'm trying this now, but wanted to know if you had any thoughts on this...

Would their be a problem with creating a second cron (scheduled task) to run every 10 minutes on the 5's (5,15,25,35,45,55) so my queue is processed every 5 minutes instead of every 10?

I think this should work, and the crons do run, but I'm not sure the 2nd one is actually processing email, though I believe it is.

So in short my mail queue processes every 5 minutes instead of every 10. My board is pretty big, and I've had complaints about it taking a long time to get their messages... You know how that goes.

So far so good...

[dtommy79]

Originally Posted by Paul M

On the main index page, above the Administrator Notes.

For some reason it doesn't want to send emails. For days now I have this message above admin notes.

There are currently 769 unsent emails remaining in the mail queue.

[Arsh]

HI

When trying to install the mod, I'm getting this error:

vBulletin Message

XML Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at Line 1

How do I fix this?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by jw00dy

Would their be a problem with creating a second cron (scheduled task) to run every 10 minutes on the 5's (5,15,25,35,45,55) so my queue is processed every 5 minutes instead of every 10?

That would work fine.

[jw00dy]

Thanks paul.

[Froggy32701]

E-Mail Send Delay

Is this out of que? or into.

As I set this to 1 and it seems like it was 1 second for each to go into que? If so what is the benefit of this?