Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Cron based e-mail sending

As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.

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 does two things ;

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

2. Allows you to add a small delay before each e-mail is sent (between 1 and 9 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 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 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.


History:

v3.8.001 : First Release for vB 3.8.

[eatworksleepdie]

say, I'm not having any luck finding the "Queue" to see where my email message is up to, where's the queue located at in ACP - VB 3.8.1?

[Quads]

The main ACP page when you log in. You'll see it there.

<removed>

1. Mod file(s) as stated in the Cron-Mail-Queue.txt
2. Backup orig. files. Upload edited to appropriate locations. Upload other file needed.
3. Install xml through ACP
4. Configure number of emails per hour:
ACP> VB Options> Email Options>
Find: Use Mailqueue System.
Change to Yes
Find: Number of Emails to Send Per Batch
Set to 50, 60, 70, etc.
**NOTE** Cron job runs every 10 minutes by default / when isntalled. So if you send 50 per batch, 6 times an hour, that would be 300 per hour.
To view the queue, log into your ACP, scroll down past the Notices, and you'll find:
Mailqueue Quick Stats
To view the cron job:
ACP> Scheduled Tasks> Scheduled Task Manager>
where you will find: "Process Mail Queue for vBulletin 3.7"
You can view the cron job, edit / disable, and or manually run the job by clicking the "Run Now" button.

Other than that, it's pretty straight forward.

Regards-
~Q

[vitrag24]

Originally Posted by Quads

To view the queue, log into your ACP, scroll down past the Notices, and you'll find:
Mailqueue Quick Stats

Thanks a lot.

Atleast someone provided support to this mod.

I'm unable to see mailqueue quick stats past notices in admincp.

can u help to find?

[Quads]

Originally Posted by vitrag24

Thanks a lot.

Atleast someone provided support to this mod.

I'm unable to see mailqueue quick stats past notices in admincp.

can u help to find?

Not really sure what you're looking for.
Unless there are emails sitting in the queue, waiting to be sent by the cron job, then it should read: "The mail queue is currently empty."

Is there something else you are looking for? And it's entirely possible that there's something I'm not aware of, due to the expansive documentation on this mod.

[Quads]

You can see some other very basic information showing that the script ran by going here:
ACP> Statistics and Logs> Scheduled Task Log> select "Process Mail Queue" from the drop down, and it will give you the entries of the cron job running at its scheduled intervals.

[vitrag24]

Originally Posted by Quads

Not really sure what you're looking for.
Unless there are emails sitting in the queue, waiting to be sent by the cron job, then it should read: "The mail queue is currently empty."

Is there something else you are looking for? And it's entirely possible that there's something I'm not aware of, due to the expansive documentation on this mod.

You've told that "To view the queue, log into your ACP, scroll down past the Notices, and you'll find: Mailqueue Quick Stats"

I'm unable to find that.

[Paul M]

The only way it would not appear is if you havent turned mail queuing on.

[LilleMama]

I wonder if its posible to modify it to start sending mails at night time ( when the server load are low )

[vitrag24]

Originally Posted by Paul M

The only way it would not appear is if you havent turned mail queuing on.

I've enabled mailqueue and it's also showing in logs but not showing any option named mailqueue quick stats in admincp.

[Log on]

Great