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.

[Sherrie]

Never mind, I figured it out (scheduled task manager) and it is running beautifully, thank you very much as I really needed this!

One more question though, how do you view your mail queue?

Cheers

[Paul M]

See post #32

[helpmehost]

reserved

[wii]

The update works fine, but very slow, since my host requires me to set it to throttle it at least every 6 seconds, now the email manager take forever to get the mails out.

[Paul M]

Six seconds is a ridiculous amount of time, it *will* run slowly.

[wii]

Yeah, I will contact my host again about this.

[dtommy79]

Hi,

It may be a dull question, but how can I use it?

I have to enable Mailqueue System and set the "Number of Emails to Send Per Batch" option and that's it?

And also on my host I have a 200 emails/hour limit, I have around 1000 members. What's the best settings for me?

thanks for the help

[Paul M]

Once its installed, yes, you just enable the queue system and set the number - in your case you should set it to 30. (30 x 6 = 180 per hour).

[dtommy79]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Once its installed, yes, you just enable the queue system and set the number - in your case you should set it to 30. (30 x 6 = 180 per hour).

Hi,

I enabled and set the number, but I think it's not doing what it supposed to.

When I try to check the logs it says there is no result. The logging is enabled though.

[StonePilot]

Looks like it's working properly for me, my VPS has the emails shut down pretty tight so this is great!