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.
Upgrading from the 3.5 version.
If you have the 3.5 version installed then you don't need to upgrade - however if you decide to upgrade then you need to delete the current cron job in the Scheduled Tasks Manager and then import the product xml via the ACP Product Manager. The file edits do not need to be changed.
Queue Size
Antivirus has posted a nifty little addon that displays the current size of the mail queue here.
History:
v1.12 : First Release for vB 3.6.
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This modification may not be copied, reproduced or published elsewhere without author's permission.
Would this be a good solution for email limits set by a web host? The host I am with currently limits me to 200 emails per hour, and will disable the mail should I go over that. If I set it to 100, and the interval to 1 hour that would get by the limit with room to spare.
Would this be a good solution for email limits set by a web host? The host I am with currently limits me to 200 emails per hour, and will disable the mail should I go over that. If I set it to 100, and the interval to 1 hour that would get by the limit with room to spare.
Would that be possible with this mod?
set this to run once an hour.
set your emails to send out batches of 85 and you shuold be more than fine.
Not much really, this basically just completes the porting of my 3.5 mods - which is why it says you can carry on running the 3.5 version if you already have it installed. The only significant change is that you don't need to manually create the cron task when installing it, the product does that (and it runs every 10 mins now, not 15).
This is brilliant, I spent an hour sending out emails the other day, and then firefox crashed half way through after sending 20 000 emails and then I had to try and find a user that was around that number, so I didnt send duplicates to the first 20 000 again, it was a real pain lol
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12-12-2006, 07:44 PM
