Additional Features and Enhancements

Newbie Joined: Nov 28, 2010 Posts: 1

Hi Montego

Great module by the way.

I help run a ravennuke based site with over 20000 forum users, and we need to send newsletters out to all these users about upcoming shows relating to the site etc etc.

My problems are as follows (not as much a problem with the module itself)
As we are on a shared server we are restricted to the amount of emails sent out in any given time frame (ie 1hr = 500 emails), is there anyway that you know that this module could be modified to maybe throttle these emails in some way.
I have been discussing this with my friend and he says we could put all users in seperate groups by there user_id in blocks of 400 and send to groups that way, but this is time consuming as all the users will have to be added into a group manually at a guess.

Does the html newsletter module give you notice of bounced email addresses, and does it continue to send the newsletter after that email address has bounced to the rest of the addresses.

Is there a way to be able to save and resend the same newsletter, I know it archives them but there does not seem to be a way to resend that archived newsletter, or am I doing something wrong

Is any of this possible in this module at all, would be great if they were especially for sites with a large user base and are on shared servers with email restrictions

Many thanks for your time

Kenno

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Kenno,

These are all planned features, but to by quite honest, the current HTML Newsletter does not support large user sites very well. Never has unfortunately. To incorporate these features are possible with time, I support, but a site of your size should really be on a more beefy server package IMO as at even 500 sends per hour, it will take a very long time to send to all 20,000 users!

Of, you may wish to investigate an on-line service that does email campaigns and are geared up for this kind of volume.

Version 1.4 was going to make resends possible, but due to time constraints, I am going to have to push that out to version 1.5. Was hoping to get 1.4 out before the end of the year. Just not enough time to code I'm afraid. Sad

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

Maybe PHPList is a better alternative for a huge site with 20000 users and restrictions in sending speed?
http://www.phplist.com/

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Yeah, kguske mentioned this tool to me awhile back and I was considering looking into it as a possible HNL replacement. Still might. Why re-invent the wheel if I can integrate it as a *nuke module. Something to consider for sure.

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

There is a script in PHPList to import nuke_users table to the PHPList database already.
http://docs.phplist.com/IntegratingPhpListWithOtherPackages

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Yup. Found that too. While I should really be staying on track with my current workload, I am finding this an interesting diversion. Since releasing the Mailer, I am at a reasonable breaking point to spend a little bit of time looking at how to integrate this better into *nuke...

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

What I like very much in the HTML Newsletter is the templates and especially the feature to visualize the latest forums posts in the newsletter. It is a very appreciated feature of the newsletter. Normally there are 100+ latest topics in my weekly newsletter.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Yeah, finished up my review of phpList and found some things that I liked and others that I did not. Its interesting because its a cross between some features of HNL, TegoNuke Mailer, and NSN Mailing List. I just may continue down the path of trying to better integrate these three... maybe they all just boil down into TegoNuke Mailer as one overall offering.

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

Are you planning to include a sort of timer in TegoNukeMailer, so that the newsletter can be sent batchwise i.e 200 newsletter an hour?

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

There is a plug-in for the Swift Mailer that supposedly does this, but, yes, that is the plan.

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

Very interesting. If I recall PHPList correct, if sending batchwise is used one has to have the admin page for PHPList open in the browser all the time during send period. Is it the same thing with the plugin of Swift Mailer?

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Just checked, and unfortunately, it uses sleep() to hold execution until it is ready to kick in again. That will not work very well with shared hosts due to script execution time-outs. What other option is there then except something that uses cron or the client browser to process...

Newbie Joined: Nov 03, 2007 Posts: 127

An alternative for HTML-Newsletter is to have a special send feature, where you can configure how many newsletter to be sent each time. At send it is displayed how many batches are available as choice and it is only to choose one of them 1, 2, 3 etc.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 1294

Yes, I agree, that is an alternative and I had thought about including some kind of send-queue-manager type capability. Its just that the HNL is going from a simple newsletter send module to a full blown newsletter service... tons of work.

Site Admin Joined: Jul 18, 2005 Posts: 383

To be honest and with respect to everyone participating in this thread, if you need to send large amounts of mail, even with a batch sending facility, you WILL, sooner or later reach a point where you are either consuming resources for an excessive amount of time, which I guarantee will upset most shared hosting providers; or you will reach a point (depending on how often you send you newsletters) where you are going to be sending out the next newsletter before that last batch is even finished.
HNL Newsletter module is a fantastic module but users should be mindful that for mass mailing, the majority of shared hosting account users WILL hit some sort of limit; either in PHP execution time, SQL query overhead or query limit, number of allowed consecutive mail limitations or simply starting a new queue before the last one finishes.

One should also keep in mind that despite what you might think, email sending is NOT instantaneous. Mail servers can hold messages in a queue for several days if there are network issues or it is unable to get a handshake from the recipient mail server.