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This modification has been withdrawn.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.

[m3_fs]

Thanks Paul, I will be trying this out tomorrow for sure. Cheers!

edit: this is used with the built in vb email manager right?

[m3_fs]

I am getting the error:

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /home/m3fs/public_html/forum/includes/functions.php
Line: 1

anyone else having that problem. If I set the

// exec_mail_queue(); // Paul M - Cron Mail Queue Hack //

line back to

exec_mail_queue();

it works again. Any ideas?

[final kaoss]

and your version of vbulletin 4.x is..?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by m3_fs

I am getting the error:



anyone else having that problem. If I set the

// exec_mail_queue(); // Paul M - Cron Mail Queue Hack //

line back to

exec_mail_queue();

it works again. Any ideas?

I dont see how that could possibly cause that, how exactly are you editing it, and changing it back ?

[m3_fs]

Yeah I am baffled too. I am editing everything in notepad.

[Paul M]

e-mail me the edited file.

[Dragonsys]

Originally Posted by Paul M

However, the more likely answer is you didnt re-do the file edits after you upgraded to 4.0.7.

you are correct, I forgot about the file changes... doh!

[imedic]

Great mod. Should be default in VB ..
Suggestions for improvement: buton to purge queue in case you found someting wrong and want to resend them.

Frustration with my server 100 mails/ hour gii

[Mehmet Aca]

Hi;

Can we see how many e-mail has been sent? and to whom ( username - e-mail or user id )

i can show below information. But i think this is not enogh to know the e-mail is sent to all of the user or not

3066 Process Mail Queue 21:06, 1st Nov 2010 Processed Mail Queue

[Paul M]

No, the number sent is not logged.