Re: [PHP] bulk mail
on 28/08/02 9:17 AM, Pupeno ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: I know a lot has been discussed in this topic, but I still don't find any solution. What I want to do is send a lot of mails triggered from a web page using php. I've found diferent solutions but all of them has some problem: 1) using set_time_limit() to allow the script to run longer while sending e-mails, my prefered solution but I won't let someone waiting a lot of time with a loading browser because they'll stop, reload, and at best, just not like it. So, I would like to launch a background process changing the set_time_limit() in that process (if needed), the problem is that I wasn't able to run a background process in PHP, were you ? I know I could use at (atd) to run a background process but in my shared server, there's no at available. If you trigger it from a web page, eventually, no matter what you do, you will hit the wall, because browsers may time out -- not just the PHP script. The ONLY option is to Bcc: everyone in your email, rather than send personalise emails. This way you only send ONE email, not 1000's. I've spent AGES researching this, and am convinced that Bcc is the only way to get the performance you want. There are many hacks work-arounds like: - have the webpage only do batches of 50 emails, and refresh with META refresh every 1 minute... come back in a few hours, and they'll all be sent. The other option to consider is to write a PHP script which runs FROM the command line. Then possibly your webpage can trigger the command line script, AND refresh to a thanks page, leaving the other command line script still running. Of course you need PHP as a command line executable for this. I really suggest speaking to your host. It's quite possible THEY have the solution you want. It's also quite possible that they HATE bulk mailing via their web page servers, and will actually impose restrictions. They may also have a dedicated mailing server (as my ISP does) which can handle this sorta stuff. 2) Queuing instead of sending. I've seen that some people improved the 'sending' (well, it's not sending anymore) by queuin only. Then some people tell me that sendmails always queue and I'm a bit confused. Does sendmail queue or sends mails ? if it queue, why is it send imediatly if the queue is procesed once an hour or so ? I don't care if my mails are procesed once an hour for this mails, I don't need them to be sent imediatly. I can't change sendmail configuration (since it's a shared server) and I wouldn't want to because I have other 'mail cases' when I want to send the mails imediatly. I can't change the way PHP calls sendmail (again, it's a shared server) but I'm using PHPMailer and I can change the way PHPMailer uses sendmail, will `/usr/sbin/sendmail -O DeliveryMode=q` queue the mails I'm sending ? The issue of queing is only there IF you wish to send personalised emails. Queing is NOT an issue for sending an email with a Bcc of 50,000 people. 3) Someone told me to do it using cron, do you have any idea of how to do it with cron ? Cron is a way of executing a process at a certain time (eg 3am daily). If you were able to write a command-line PHP script to send you email (queries a DB or text file to get the message body, then grabs the address', then send the email(s)), you could set it to run at a time which the server is less busy (eg 4am). You could also use it to partially-send to the list in batches of 100 people, at 5 minute intervals or something. The real answer to your question is: If you are doing this on a shared host, use Bcc and keep it simple... your host will probably see the huge system burden you are placing, and impose restrictions on you. If you want a dedicated mailing list with personalised emails, you should look at a dedicated mailing list system on your host, or another host, which tackles the issue properly. There's sparklist.com, ezmlm, etc etc. Your host may be interesting in setting up a program to do this... Justin -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] bulk mail()
I've been doing the following sending personalized mail to 600+ recipients, so far without any signs of discomfort anywhere: set_time_limit($total_rows * 1); // up the script timeout 1 second per email BTW, I use qmail; not sendmail. As I've never used sendmail, I don't know if this is part of your problem or not. I'm guessing a bit, but based on 600+ emails, I'd say that the script itself takes about 10-15 seconds; the mail to be delivered takes a bit longer, perhaps another minute or two. Jeff -Original Message- From: Justin French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 6:45 AM To: php Subject: [PHP] bulk mail() Hi all, I've got a mailing on a website, with email address' / names / etc in a MySQL table. I think there's around 120 on it at the moment. I've been noticing a growing lag on the sending of mail though... I've got a script which takes a message from a form, then runs a while loop through the rows of the mailing_list table, replacing a special string with the subscribers name, and sending using the mail() command. However, this time, the script actually failed, with a failure when attempting to access blah.com/foo.php (the sending script). I have no idea if SOME people got the email, or what, and have no idea how to check. So, I make the assumption that as the mailing list has grown, the script time has slowed... now it's too big (or the server was too busy) to process all the emails before the script timed out. If I didn't want to personalise the emails, I'm sure the script would run a lot quicker with every address in the Bcc header, but since we personalise each email, I can't see any option other than using mail() 200 times... and it's only going to get a lot worse as we climb to 1000+. So, what options do I have? Break the mailing list up into batches of 40 or so? How would I implement something like this? Any advice / concepts / ideas welcome! Justin French Creative Director http://Indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] bulk mail()
-Original Message- From: Justin French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 6:45 AM To: php Subject: [PHP] bulk mail() Hi all, I've got a mailing on a website, with email address' / names / etc in a MySQL table. I think there's around 120 on it at the moment. I've been noticing a growing lag on the sending of mail though... I've got a script which takes a message from a form, then runs a while loop through the rows of the mailing_list table, replacing a special string with the subscribers name, and sending using the mail() command. You're using something like mysql_fetch_array and not querying the db 120 times I hope. However, this time, the script actually failed, with a failure when attempting to access blah.com/foo.php (the sending script). I have no idea if SOME people got the email, or what, and have no idea how to check. go through the your MTA's logs (long and painful process) So, I make the assumption that as the mailing list has grown, the script time has slowed... now it's too big (or the server was too busy) to process all the emails before the script timed out. The time your MTA takes to process the emails has nothing to do with this. 120 calls to mail() should not time out, maybe you have a complicated regexp for fixing that name in the emails what's the body of your while() loop ? If I didn't want to personalise the emails, I'm sure the script would run a lot quicker with every address in the Bcc header, but since we personalise each email, I can't see any option other than using mail() 200 times... and it's only going to get a lot worse as we climb to 1000+. putting 120 email addresses in one bcc will surely get your email classified as spam So, what options do I have? Break the mailing list up into batches of 40 or so? How would I implement something like this? you could try adding a column in your db that will reflect the last time you've sent an email to that person. Then you could just append LIMIT 40 to your select query, but updating the column requires a separate query (1 update per email if you want to know exactly how got the email and who didn't) Pawel -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] bulk mail()
on 15/06/02 5:32 AM, Pawel ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
You're using something like mysql_fetch_array and not querying the db 120
times I hope.
of course! :)
The time your MTA takes to process the emails has nothing to do with this.
120 calls to mail() should not time out, maybe you have a complicated
regexp for fixing that name in the emails
what's the body of your while() loop ?
nothing too complex at all:
while($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
$to = $myrow[email];
$name = $myrow[name];
$this_message = eregi_replace('#name#',$name,$message);
$this_message = stripslashes($this_message);
$this_message .= $email_footer;
$headers = From: mailinglist@{$domain_name};
mail($to, $subject, $this_message.$email_footer, $headers);
}
putting 120 email addresses in one bcc will surely get your email
classified as spam
good point
you could try adding a column in your db that will reflect the last time
you've sent an email to that person. Then you could just append LIMIT 40
to your select query, but updating the column requires a separate query (1
update per email if you want to know exactly how got the email and who didn't)
I think i'll write a simple log file for each send-out
Based on everyone's advice, I'm going to break the sending process into
batches of 10 or 20 rows using a redirect, encorporate a log (so that I can
remove bad address' that may slow it down), and then see where to go from
there.
Thanks for everyone's help.
Justin French
--
PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] bulk mail()
One solution could be this: You only need on page for this: 1) create an array of recipients 2) get value from array like array[$pos]; 3) send mail to this receiver 4) now some javascript, unless ofcourse if $pos is bigger than count($array): location.href = http://blah.com/foo.php?pos=?=$pos+1? And keep some log on sending. Even simple text file will do, if you are sending mails in some known order. Log file is very handy if cpu crashes, or something else happens. Niklas -Original Message- From: Justin French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 12. kesäkuuta 2002 14:45 To: php Subject: [PHP] bulk mail() Hi all, I've got a mailing on a website, with email address' / names / etc in a MySQL table. I think there's around 120 on it at the moment. I've been noticing a growing lag on the sending of mail though... I've got a script which takes a message from a form, then runs a while loop through the rows of the mailing_list table, replacing a special string with the subscribers name, and sending using the mail() command. However, this time, the script actually failed, with a failure when attempting to access blah.com/foo.php (the sending script). I have no idea if SOME people got the email, or what, and have no idea how to check. So, I make the assumption that as the mailing list has grown, the script time has slowed... now it's too big (or the server was too busy) to process all the emails before the script timed out. If I didn't want to personalise the emails, I'm sure the script would run a lot quicker with every address in the Bcc header, but since we personalise each email, I can't see any option other than using mail() 200 times... and it's only going to get a lot worse as we climb to 1000+. So, what options do I have? Break the mailing list up into batches of 40 or so? How would I implement something like this? Any advice / concepts / ideas welcome! Justin French Creative Director http://Indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php ### This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Internet Mail. For more information, connect to http://www.F-Secure.com/ ### This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Internet Mail. For more information, connect to http://www.F-Secure.com/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] bulk mail()
Do it just like you would with prev/next links. Use LIMIT in your query to get out 50 or so at a time. Loop through them, sending mail, then use header to automatically redirect to the next page, incrementing the number to use in LIMIT. ---John Holmes... - Original Message - From: Justin French [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: php [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 7:44 AM Subject: [PHP] bulk mail() Hi all, I've got a mailing on a website, with email address' / names / etc in a MySQL table. I think there's around 120 on it at the moment. I've been noticing a growing lag on the sending of mail though... I've got a script which takes a message from a form, then runs a while loop through the rows of the mailing_list table, replacing a special string with the subscribers name, and sending using the mail() command. However, this time, the script actually failed, with a failure when attempting to access blah.com/foo.php (the sending script). I have no idea if SOME people got the email, or what, and have no idea how to check. So, I make the assumption that as the mailing list has grown, the script time has slowed... now it's too big (or the server was too busy) to process all the emails before the script timed out. If I didn't want to personalise the emails, I'm sure the script would run a lot quicker with every address in the Bcc header, but since we personalise each email, I can't see any option other than using mail() 200 times... and it's only going to get a lot worse as we climb to 1000+. So, what options do I have? Break the mailing list up into batches of 40 or so? How would I implement something like this? Any advice / concepts / ideas welcome! Justin French Creative Director http://Indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] bulk mail()
I find a few bad addresses can slow mail() down, i write to a log file if mail returns true or to a bad mail file if false, try the bad emails later and then take them off the list if still bad. you can increase your time out with set_time_limit(), i'd also send when the server isn't too busy. bcc is faster but will usually end up getting binned as Spam as they are not addressed to the recipient and fail junk mail filters as used by hotmail. if 1 of your 100 emails is bad the whole lot can be rejected by the server and not sent. Paul Roberts [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: Niklas Lampén [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Php-General [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:08 PM Subject: RE: [PHP] bulk mail() One solution could be this: You only need on page for this: 1) create an array of recipients 2) get value from array like array[$pos]; 3) send mail to this receiver 4) now some javascript, unless ofcourse if $pos is bigger than count($array): location.href = http://blah.com/foo.php?pos=?=$pos+1? And keep some log on sending. Even simple text file will do, if you are sending mails in some known order. Log file is very handy if cpu crashes, or something else happens. Niklas -Original Message- From: Justin French [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 12. kesäkuuta 2002 14:45 To: php Subject: [PHP] bulk mail() Hi all, I've got a mailing on a website, with email address' / names / etc in a MySQL table. I think there's around 120 on it at the moment. I've been noticing a growing lag on the sending of mail though... I've got a script which takes a message from a form, then runs a while loop through the rows of the mailing_list table, replacing a special string with the subscribers name, and sending using the mail() command. However, this time, the script actually failed, with a failure when attempting to access blah.com/foo.php (the sending script). I have no idea if SOME people got the email, or what, and have no idea how to check. So, I make the assumption that as the mailing list has grown, the script time has slowed... now it's too big (or the server was too busy) to process all the emails before the script timed out. If I didn't want to personalise the emails, I'm sure the script would run a lot quicker with every address in the Bcc header, but since we personalise each email, I can't see any option other than using mail() 200 times... and it's only going to get a lot worse as we climb to 1000+. So, what options do I have? Break the mailing list up into batches of 40 or so? How would I implement something like this? Any advice / concepts / ideas welcome! Justin French Creative Director http://Indent.com.au -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php ### This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Internet Mail. For more information, connect to http://www.F-Secure.com/ ### This message has been scanned by F-Secure Anti-Virus for Internet Mail. For more information, connect to http://www.F-Secure.com/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
