Mass Mail/Newsletters Via Cronjob

For those of you who use the "Send Email to Users" function in the admin cp may have noticed it is less than efficient. This is really not the Vbulletin teams fault, it is just the fact that sending a lot of emails via PHP is like emptying lake with a bucket.

For administrators with a very large user base, sending email this way is not only very time consuming, but can be taxing on a servers resources.

With this extension, you can save your mass mailings or newsletters in a batch that can be sent at any time you wish, or on a schedule using a program like crontab.

You can even use a separate server to send the email if you wish.

Version 1.1 now supports the hack Send HTML via admin CP so you can batch mail HTML emails.



Requirements:

Perl (Some hosts call this CGI) w/ the DBI module (MySQL driver)
Net::SMTP module IF you plan on using SMTP (common Perl module)
Sendmail or SMTP
Access to crontab (for scheduled processing)
Telnet/SSH access to your server (for testing purposes only)

As for Telnet/SSH access, you will most likely need this unless you can schedule a cronjob via your servers admin GUI.


CHANGELOG:

01/05/2005: Added support for SMTP
01/05/2005: Modified code to include Vbulletin generated mail headers and encoding


Installation (detailed in readme file):

Install the product via your admin cp.

Open the list.cgi file and edit the database variables and upload to server IN ASCII MODE. Do not use Binary or Auto mode to upload list.cgi. You should upload this file in an area that is NOT accessible by a web browser.

Click Install

That is it. If you wish to use scheduled batches then you will have to set up a cronjob to execute the list.cgi file.

You can execute the list.cgi file any time you wish on your server like so:

"perl list.cgi"



What does this do exactly?:

In a nutshell, when you enter a message into the mass mail feature of Vbulletin, it saves the message details to a new table created by the product (massmail). When list.cgi is executed, it will go through this table and email everyone in the table and delete their entry after the mail is sent.



Usage:

The only thing you should do differently is set the "Emails to send at once" value to at least the amount of users you have registered. It defaults at 500 but the whole point of this hack is to eliminate having to send email in blocks and wait for the process to finish. Just set it to a real high number.



To Do:

For those Windows servers, I suppose the Send_Mail routine could use SMTP. This is not hard to do I just never use Windows servers so what's the point?

[masterross]

hi,

i've got this error after sending first mail:

DBD::mysql::db do failed: MySQL server has gone away at /root/list.cgi line 29.
Broken pipe DBI: MySQL server has gone away at /root/list.cgi line 29.

any help?

[rastler]

Hi,

I have a doubt,

If we use this Hack will the mails be sent twice, Once using the PERL file and the massmail table and second with existing mail system of vbMail ?

Rastler

[xcingix]

Originally Posted by NxTek

When trying to uninstall -

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.2:

Invalid SQL:
DROP massmail;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'massmail' at line 1 Error Number : 1064
Date : Thursday, February 2nd 2006 @ 08:21:39 AM
Script : http://www.xxxx.com/forums/admincp/plugin.php
Referrer : http://www.xxxx.com/forums/admincp/p...s-Mail-Cron&s=

I have the same problem.
I have left this product in my instillation for years because I cant uninstall it.
Can someone help me uninstall this?

[UK Jimbo]

I've not ever installed this software but I'm pretty confident that the uninstall is trying to remove the massmail table from the database. In which case the correct syntax is:

DROP TABLE massmail;

[xcingix]

Originally Posted by UK Jimbo

I've not ever installed this software but I'm pretty confident that the uninstall is trying to remove the massmail table from the database. In which case the correct syntax is:

DROP TABLE massmail;

just run that query and it will be uninstalled?

[UK Jimbo]

Originally Posted by xcingix

just run that query and it will be uninstalled?

No. You need to modify the uninstall code for the product.

Login to your admincp and go to "Manage Products"

Find this product and choose to edit it.

Look for the "DROP massmail" text in the uninstall code and replace it with "DROP TABLE massmail"

Save these changes and then try running the uninstall process again.

[xcingix]

Originally Posted by UK Jimbo

No. You need to modify the uninstall code for the product.

Login to your admincp and go to "Manage Products"

Find this product and choose to edit it.

Look for the "DROP massmail" text in the uninstall code and replace it with "DROP TABLE massmail"

Save these changes and then try running the uninstall process again.

this is the current uninstall though.

$db->query_write("DROP " . TABLE_PREFIX . "massmail");

[UK Jimbo]

Looks like it does just remove that table. To make it run correctly change it to the following:

$db->query_write("DROP TABLE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "massmail");

[xcingix]

Originally Posted by UK Jimbo

Looks like it does just remove that table. To make it run correctly change it to the following:

$db->query_write("DROP TABLE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "massmail");

still doesnt work

Database error in vBulletin 3.7.0 Beta 2:

Invalid SQL:
DROP TABLE massmail;

MySQL Error  : Unknown table 'massmail'
Error Number : 1051
Date         : Tuesday, December 18th 2007 @ 10:16:28 PM
Script       : http://forums.ny-dev.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productkill
Referrer     : http://forums.ny-dev.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productdelete&productid=Mass-Mail-Cron&s=
IP Address   : 69.112.68.55
Username     : danny.michel
Classname    : vb_database

[xcingix]

anyone?