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As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.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.

[weindians]

i want to know whether u need to leave ur brower [acp] on until all emails sent out like the phplist does or queueing is going to server side?? i need to know b4 installing . if so i will continue to use phplist... thanx paul for the mod

[Paul M]

Please clarify your question.

[weindians]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Please clarify your question.

not much to clarify... as it says "do i need to leave the email sending interface of acp open [ simply browser] until all emails sent out [ or until job finish] or will it stop if i close browser? . can i move on when all emails sent to queue ,confirmed in acp[ i suppose as i havent tested yet]

edit : i installed n cleared myself .

[weindians]

mailque in acp says 3,761 in queue. i sent mails yesterday around same time... total members 4600+ . but when sent all mail queue was below 4000 [ it was about 3900+ as far a i remember], i donno where is other 600-700 mails? may be banned n other etc. scheduled task[cron] for mailque seem to be not running every 10 mts.. my batch setting is 30 . delay 0 [ i changed to 1 now to see - no effect , may be mails already in queue]. but number reduced by 30 when i ran sch.task manually.. diagnotic email tested n working..

[Paul M]

Again, I dont follow what your actual question is ?

[weindians]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Again, I dont follow what your actual question is ?

actual question is why mailque still 3700+ even after 48 hours[now] when set to send 180 email/hour??.. or this mod send emails only if that member visit forum.
..

[Paul M]

actual question is why mailque still 3700+ even after 48 hours[now] when set to send 180 email/hour??.

Since any answer to that question would require access to your server and ACP to see how its set-up and working, I cannot answer it.

[weindians]

if u tell me what info related to server n acp needed i can provide you... below is scheduled task log...as per log it seems running 2-3 times a day only.. setting are default 10 ,20, 30,40 etc...

http://i53.tinypic.com/zthq48.jpg

[Paul M]

Unfortunately I cant view that from work (they block tinypic) so I'll look later. Initially I think i'd only need ACP access if you want to PM me an admin login with full access.

[Paul M]

The picture above confirms what I found from the access you gave me. Your problem is that your site is not busy enough to keep the vb cron system running - it needs regular visitors (not spiders) to keep it running. As you can see from you picture, its only managing to run the schedule very sporadically (about once an hour in the day, hardly at all at night).

About the only thing you can do is increase the batch size, so at least when it does run, it processes more. Try something like 200.