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.

[len backus]

Do I need to first uninstall Version 1.12?

[Paul M]

You dont need to, you can just install this over the top of the old version. Your choice.

[len backus]

Paul, thanks. Do I need to do the file edits again or just upload the xml file?

[Paul M]

Check the edits, afaik they are the same.

[len backus]

Paul, After upgrade I now show 2 copies of Mailque Quick Stats in my Admin CP. ??

[pmcnamara]

I'm confused about the cron job.. what command am I asking it to run ?

[420]

i have v3.7.003 with vb 3.73 pl1

how do i tell how many seconds the delay is set for?

i had a programmer install it then went mia.

i was able to send out ten thousand emails an hour before loading this, now i can only send out about a thousand per hour, i think this may be why... is it possible?

thanks for your valuable time and support!

[Paul M]

The delay is a setting in the vb options for this mod, simply check what its set to.

[420]

is this the code to change from 10 seconds to 1 second? < 10) to < 1)?

<removed>

[420]

and does this work on 3.73 pl1?