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This modification has been withdrawn.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.

[vitrag24]

my hosts allows 1500/hour, i've set 210/batch, is it ok?

Use mailqueue system - Yes/Yes with locking? i kept yes as of now..
I've 40,000+ users..

anything else i need to edit in settings or default is fine?

[TeknoSounds]

well you can manually adjust how often the queue sends and how many it sends per batch.
So if you have 1500...say you need to save like 250/hr for other emails your board sends out, so this means you can send 1250/hr without going over your limit.
If you wanted large batches you could send only like 250 every 15min or do small batches of 20 every 3min. Just as an example...I didn't actually figure the math out on those

[DarKNull]

Does this work with Admincp -> Users -> Send email to users ?

[Paul M]

As it says ;

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.

[BiZiMDiYaR]

Hi Paul,

Will test this out... Thanks. Would be great if in the future you also could add feature that 1x time per week and email is send to all users.. or per maybe 2x weeks, where in the email, we can add recent posts added, most popular topics of last month etc etc.. This way we can keep the users updated on all items .

Maybe also... the ability to add holidays into the system and send out pre arranged emails like on Christmas to the users with a particular text that has been set before.

Thanks.

[Abhik]

Paul,
Is it a "set it and forget it" setting?

I mean, Is there anything I need to do after I choose "Users > Send Email To users", write the subject, email body and click on Submit?

[ASPnix]

Does this work as well for forum subscription notifications?

[Paul M]

If they use the vb e-mail queue then yes.

[Makaveli007]

i edited the functions file exactly as stated (not the functions exec_mail_queue();, just exec_mail_queue() to
// exec_mail_queue(); // Paul M - Cron Mail Queue Hack //

and I get the functions.php syntax error. The line exec_mail_queue is in there twice, once with functions before, once without. I tried changing both, and tried changing just the one with function before it, and tried just with the one that doesn't have function before it. All combos cause the syntax error. When I change the line back, the error goes away.

vbulletin 4.1.1

any ideas Paul? did something in the latest version "break" your modification?

[Paul M]

Nothing has changed in 4.1.1, so you must be making some kind of mistake, or somehow corrupting your file.

JFYI, the line is near the end of the file (i.e. not the function definition).