• From: Norfolk, England
  • Registered: 2018-03-02
  • Posts: 70

Topic: Recipient List - Maxmum Size?

Hi Roel,

It's been a while since I've had to ask a question about Luxcal. Our diary has been rather empty over the last year!

As we recover from lockdown our calendar is about to become populated with events again and I am thinking that our entire membership ought to be informed, via email, when certain events are entered.

That means there will be a lot of addresses in my "members.txt" recipient list file.

Does Luxcal include any code to breakdown into smaller groups and delay the sending of emails to stop my web host treating such bulk emails as those generated by a spammer?

If not, do you have any suggestions on how to ensure that all members receive notifications of events?

Quote Post 1

  • From: Norfolk, England
  • Registered: 2018-03-02
  • Posts: 70

Re: Recipient List - Maxmum Size?

Just heard from my hosts support desk. They say:

There is a limit in the mail gateway of 25 emails per 30 minutes from a single address. On the server its 100 per hour.
To be safe stagger the emails sent to 25 per 30 minutes that would prevent any issues.

Quote Post 2

  • Roel
  • Roel
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2018-02-26
  • Posts: 565

Re: Recipient List - Maxmum Size?

Hi Greg,

On the Settings page in the Reminders section it is possible to specify the maximum number of recipients per email. When there are more recipients in the list, the calendar will break down the recipients list and send several emails, each with the specified maximum number.
However, unfortunately these staggered emails are send one after each other without delay in between.
The problem is that in PHP it is not possible to program a delay of 30 minutes. There is a "sleep" function, but it cannot sleep longer than the maximum execution time of the PHP script, which is normally some 30 seconds.
At the moment I don't see a simple solution.
How many emails do you have to send in total? And within how much time?

Roel

Quote Post 3

  • From: Norfolk, England
  • Registered: 2018-03-02
  • Posts: 70

Re: Recipient List - Maxmum Size?

Thanks for the prompt response and info - even though the answer's not the best. sad

The number of emails would certainly be under 125 even allowing for a little expansion in the foreseeable future.

I use SMTP to send my emails. I don't suppose it would be possible to intercept all emails from the "diary@mydomain.com" address and send them through a CRON routine that stopped them being processed immediately?

The only other approach I can think of is to use a single address  in Luxcal which is directed to external mail list software that is capable of delivering the required load on the server. Trouble is the only scripts that I know that would do that are all enormously complicated to set up for such a simple task.

I guess there are none that you know of that may be appropriate?

Quote Post 4

  • From: Norfolk, England
  • Registered: 2018-03-02
  • Posts: 70

Re: Recipient List - Maxmum Size?

It's just occurred to me... I have been turning a blind eye to the solution that is in my hands.

The account at my hosting service is managed through cPanel. It includes Mailman software, pre-configured so it can't break their email policies. I'll just have to go through the pain of looking at every one of the packages almost infinite options to make sure it doesn't produce any unwanted surprises for the current purpose.

Quote Post 5