Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Cron Based E-Mail Sending

This modification is no longer available or supported.

In default vBulletin if you send a large number of e-mails, vbulletin either puts them in it's queue and then attempts to send them as each user visits a page, or just simply tries to send them straight away (This is the case when you use the Administrators email users inteface).

As a result of this your server can become seriously overloaded very quickly - so sending several thousand e-mails (like a newsletter) can become very difficult (hours spent clicking 'next' in the ACP) - as a result of these problems, this very simple modification was born.

This modification does two things ;

1. E-mails from the ACP inteface are sent to the mail queue, not straight to the mail system.

2. The processing of the mail queue is set-up as a vb cron item.

Obviously 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 realisitc 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 (v3.7.002 onwards).

Version 3.7.003 has the option to add a small delay before each e-mail is sent (between 1 and 9 seconds). Use this option carefully.



History:

v3.7.001 : First Release for vB 3.7
v3.7.002 : Added mail queue size display code.
v3.7.003 : Added option for a delay between the sending of each e-mail.

[Paul M]

Read the first post.

[hdrmut]

Thank you

[asj]

Thank you very much

[kylek]

"Queue Size
Antivirus has posted a nifty little addon that displays the current size of the mail queue here."

This doesn't seem to work with 3.7.0 Beta 4. When you import the product you get this:

The following dependencies were not met:

1. The product paulm_20060709 must be installed before this product may be installed. (Compatible starting with 1)

[Howell]

Originally Posted by kylek

"Queue Size
Antivirus has posted a nifty little addon that displays the current size of the mail queue here."

This doesn't seem to work with 3.7.0 Beta 4. When you import the product you get this:

The following dependencies were not met:

1. The product paulm_20060709 must be installed before this product may be installed. (Compatible starting with 1)

Open: product-anti_mailqueue_stats_acp

Find:

PHP Code:

    <dependencies>
        <dependency dependencytype="product" parentproductid="paulm_20060709" minversion="1" maxversion="" />
    </dependencies> 


Replace with:

PHP Code:

    <dependencies>
        <dependency dependencytype="product" parentproductid="paulm_cmq_37" minversion="1" maxversion="" />
    </dependencies> 


Thats what I did to get it working.

[Paul M]

Yes, well spotted.

I suppose what I should really do is ask Antivirus if I can include his code in the main product.

[webgeek247]

Hi Paul, looks like it will do the job once i figure out how to use it properly

Ive setup the script but i got this error

Database error in vBulletin 3.7.0 Release Candidate 3:

Invalid SQL:

UPDATE datastore SET
data = data - 250,
data = IF(data < 0, 0, data)
WHERE title = 'mailqueue';

MySQL Error : MySQL server has gone away
Error Number : 2006
Date : Friday, April 18th 2008 @ 07:02:17 PM
Script : http://www.djpassion.co.uk/forums/ad...cron&cronid=21
Referrer : http://www.djpassion.co.uk/forums/admincp/index.php
IP Address : **********
Username : Chris Powell
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

It seemed to work out with the email send out setting set to 10 but when i tried 250 i got the above error

My host allow 500 emails to be sent out per hour. I have just under 1000 members so to be on the safe side would have thought setting it to send 250 emails per hour would work ok...please help

[webgeek247]

Ps even though it said it failed i think the emails still sent out because the Mailqueue Quick Stats went from around 950 to this

There are currently 679 unsent emails remaining in the mail queue.

[webgeek247]

just checked back this morning and have now got

There are currently 434 unsent emails remaining in the mail queue.

more info. the error message i got above was what i got after running the Run Now button in scheduled tasks. hope this extra info helps.

[Paul M]

You obviously have a fairly low mysql timeout, so if you try and send too many emails in one go, your database connection is timing out before they have all been sent.