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This modification has been withdrawn.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.

[Hostboard]

Originally Posted by sat2006

please update for 4.2

Reading the modification description might help

For vBulletin 4.1.0 Only

Versions Attached

4107: vBulletin 4.1.0 to 4.1.12

This modification is not available for vBulletin 4.0.x

This modification is not required for vBulletin 4.2.x Onwards.

[Kraxell]

But why? Is there a option in vb4.2 what makes this plugin sinless?

Because i need a plugin to send only x mails/hour.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Kraxell

But why?

Because its part of the core code in 4.2

[sat2006]

I sent an e-mail every minute
What should I do? For version 4.2.0

i need this plugin for v4.2.0 what dont you update this plugin????

[Paul M]

Why dont you try reading the post above yours.

[astdirect]

Hi Paul,

I had this installed previously and obviously uninstalled when upgrading to 4.2 latest version with patch this week. Somehow when uninstalling though it seemed to remove the scheduled task for Process Mail Queue. No biggie, just set new one up but........ now my queue isn't going down as it should, it's set to run 80 per batch every 10 minutes but looking at my logs this is what I have :

41620 Process E-Mail Queue 16:09, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41619 Process E-Mail Queue 15:01, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41618 vB Optimise: Resource Saving Statistics 14:55, 6th Mar 2015
41617 Process E-Mail Queue 13:20, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41616 vB Optimise: Resource Saving Statistics 11:43, 6th Mar 2015
41615 Process E-Mail Queue 11:34, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41614 Process E-Mail Queue 09:45, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41613 vB Optimise: Resource Saving Statistics 09:45, 6th Mar 2015
41612 Stop the Registration Bots Random Field Generator 08:03, 6th Mar 2015 Stop the Registration Bots Rand Generator [Finished]
41611 Stop the Registration Bots Random Field Generator 08:03, 6th Mar 2015 Stop the Registration Bots Rand Generator [Started]
41610 Daily Digest 07:00, 6th Mar 2015 Daily Digest Sent
41609 Birthdays 07:00, 6th Mar 2015 Birthday Email Sent to: 02hero
41608 Process E-Mail Queue 04:43, 6th Mar 2015 E-mail Processing completed
41607 vB Optimise: Resource Saving Statistics 04:43, 6th Mar 2015
41606 vB Optimise: Resource Saving Statistics 22:46, 5th Mar 2015

If I select RUN NOW it will send a batch of 80, but the cron seems to be working very intermittently and not every 10 mins as you would expect.

Any help would be appreciated as to what may have happened