6000 Members and Email

[K2]

My message forum has 6,000 members now and I sent an email to all of the members. However, when I clicked on the send email button it just sat and did nothing. I did get email kicked back to me that said a lot of the email addresses were invalid so I know that some of the email was sent out.

My question: What should happen in theory when you do a mass mailing of all the members? Should it go to a successful email sent page or just do nothing like it did?

Look forward to your input on this.

http://www.swingerzone.com/forums/index.php

Regards,

Paul
[email protected]

[Jeff Lewis]

When it "just sat and did nothing" was it done loading or was the browser showing that something was going on?

[K2]

The IE6 logo was just sitting and spinning for about 10 minutes or more. I finally just shut the window down. It appears as if some, if not all the email was delivered, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

I guess my basic questions are these:

1. When you email members, do you get a completed task notice?

2. What is the sequence of operation for email to be sent out? Bursts of 40 emails at a time, or how does that work?

3. I anitcipate having 20,000 or more members in a few months as the board is only a couple of months old and I am promoting it hard. Can this PHP-MYSQL version handle unlimited members, or am I looking for trouble?

Thanks for your input.

[David]

I posted an announcment with slightly 2000 members and after 5 minutes of it sending mail I gave up.  It really is sending mail but sendmail is dog slow.

[Nemesis]

if you wait adventually it go back to your admin cp.

every once in awhile I get a page not found when it redirects. It slow but it works. You can alsways try chris cromer smtp mod also see if that helps. (If you have smtp support.)

[groundup]

you could also have it display who the mail was sent to if you would like to see written confirmation. I think that might help, but it would add a lot of loading time, especially with 6000 members.

[K2]

I wasn't really looking for a email confirmation of sorts. I was just wondering if after the email send function something happened. I guess from the input so far all that happens is you go to a blank page? I tried the email all members function on another board I have and it just defaulted to a "Page Not Available" page.

[Nemesis]

if you wait adventually it go back to your admin cp.

[K2]

Are you saying that it will go to "Page not found" and then after a while go to the cp?

[Greg Robson]

Unfortunately sendmail isn't very good at sending multiple emails as it has to reopen the connection to the email server. We could try making it use sockets - but not everything has that.

Perhaps making it send them in bursts of 50 with a continue function would be better?

[K2]

I wish I had the knowledge to help you all write code to make the sendmail function smoother, but alas, I am worthless trying to write a program.

However, my board is running smoothly at 6000 members and that makes me very happy. You guys have done a kick ass job with what you have done thus far and I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it.

Who is the Godfather of Yabb by the way? Just curious about the history of this whole project and how it evolved. I don't see a history link or anything. Is the history chronicled somewhere?

[David]

I installed the SMTP mod and will try it out.

Zef Hemel is the founder of YaBB Gold which is what YaBBSE was ported from.  Take a look at www.yabbforum.com for history of YaBB.

[Jack.R.Abbit]

Maybe I'm on crack but doesn't sendmail support Blind Carbon Copy?  So you could just send one email to 6000 recipients all in the BCC: field.  Noone sees anybody else's email.  Or does that not gain anything?

-Jack

[K2]

Well, if you were on crack I think you would know it and probably wouldn't have a PC since you would have sold it to support your habit.

I know nothing about sendmail protocol, but my common sense tells me that there is probably some restricition on the amount of email addresses you can use per email. 50 seems to be a fairly generic number with most mail programs. It would be fantastic if you in fact could send thousands of addresses in the Bcc field but it would be too good to be true.

[Greg Robson]

Maybe I'm on crack but doesn't sendmail support Blind Carbon Copy?  So you could just send one email to 6000 recipients all in the BCC: field.  Noone sees anybody else's email.  Or does that not gain anything?

-Jack

That's a fantastic idea!

Everytime you use sendmail it has to reopen the connection to the server. However, if you put 50 in the Bcc field it would make the mail server do all the hard work.

I'm going to research that one a little more...