Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Cron based e-mail sending

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This modification has been withdrawn.
vBulletin 4.0.x and 4.1.x are no longer supported.

The feature is already built into the core vBulletin 4.2.x code.
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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 helps in three ways ;

1. The processing of the mail queue is set-up as a vbulletin cron item.

2. You can add a small delay before each e-mail is sent (0,1,2 or 5 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 use e-mail queuing (ACP Options - Use Mailqueue System = Yes) and also the 'Number of Emails to Send Per Batch' needs to be a realistic value (see below). The installation process will attempt to set these options for you. This modification also requires two file edits to work correctly.

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 80, which is the default).

Remember, 10 e-mails per minute = 600 per hour while 80 e-mails every 10 minutes is 480 per hour. The numbers you set really depend on how quick you want large queues processed, and how much your mail server can handle in one go. The default settings are fine for most people.

Once working, when using the ACP mail users inteface, remember you can set it to process 9999 at once (not 500) as the mails will now go into the queue, not be sent directly.

Note: This modification will only affect queued e-mails such as subscription e-mails. It will not affect registration e-mails as they always bypass queuing.

This modification also displays the size of the e-mail queue in the ACP homepage, based on code supplied by Antivirus.

To install, download and uzip the files, then follow the instructions in the text file.


History:

v4.0.1 : 30-Dec-2009 : Initial release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.

v4.1.0 : 04-Dec-2010 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.

v4.1.7.0 : 16-Oct-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.7.

[cloferba]

all values from mailqueue table?

i only see
mailqueueid
dateline
toemail
fromemail
subject
message
header

[EricPSF]

Hi Paul,

I encountered 1 problem, need yr advice.

I send email (to three of my own accounts) using the ACP; it prompted sent..but I didn't received any of the emails...?

I can see from the ACP front page "The current e-mail queue size is 7" and my Number of Emails to Send Per Batch is only 15.

[Paul M]

What is your question ?

[cloferba]

paul help me...it still sending emails :S

[Paul M]

Help you do what ? Its supposed to send e-mails.

[cloferba]

well..i will tell you

i wanted to send newsletters...so i did it, but using a @gmail.com address. So, it is consider has spam (i have all my gmail account full of mails saying

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

dbmaster@example.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<xxx@gmail.com>:
host gateway.websitewelcome.com [64.5.52.8]: 553 5.5.4 I was unable to send this e-mail because the domain ( gmail.com ) has been black listed due to spam or forgery.

so, im not going to wait all days until it finish to send emails consider spam, so i want to cancel the sending...

[Paul M]

Then you need to delete the records form the mailqueue table. Im sure I told you this once.

[EricPSF]

Originally Posted by Paul M

What is your question ?

Hi Paul,

My 7 trial emails were delayed sending for abt. 3 hrs. Is it true that this mod needs heavy traffic in order to perform better? Any ways of triggering it to send the emails at a faster speed?

Btw, where can I find the mailqueue table that you have mentioned in yr last post?

[cloferba]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Then you need to delete the records form the mailqueue table. Im sure I told you this once.

ok, but then am i going to have problems to send emails if i delete all from mailqueue table?

or that table is created every time a email is set to be sended?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by EricPSF

Hi Paul,

My 7 trial emails were delayed sending for abt. 3 hrs. Is it true that this mod needs heavy traffic in order to perform better? Any ways of triggering it to send the emails at a faster speed?

Btw, where can I find the mailqueue table that you have mentioned in yr last post?

It uses the vbulletin cron system, which does require (proper) visitors to your site to work. If you have little or no traffic at all then its not going to trigger, or take a while.

The mailqueue table is just another table in your vb database.

Originally Posted by cloferba

ok, but then am i going to have problems to send emails if i delete all from mailqueue table?

or that table is created every time a email is set to be sended?

You seem to be confusing deleting records with deleting the table. You need to delete the records from the table, not the table. If you dont understand this then you need to seek help from someone who does.