mail not being received by all - HTML Forums

BonRouge · 10-03-2009, 01:44 AM

Hi there.
I need some help.

I have a mail script that seems to be faulty. I have a form that shows lots of people and their email addresses and we check boxes to choose the people to send the mail to.

When the message is written, it goes to this script below. The script checks who is on the list, sends the message to them and records in another table, who the message was sent to.

It seems that the last couple of times that we've used this some people have not received the emails. I can't find a pattern and because there are lots of people on the list (maybe 200), I can't call and ask everyone if they got the email.

I have a few ideas, but I don't know... Maybe...

... one of the addresses was not an email address, so it failed and the script stopped.

... some of the data being put into the database was odd (maybe unusual characters, which happens sometimes because we have Japanese as well as English input).

...the list was to long and the script timed out.

...there's a mistake in the script.

...my mail is being blocked/filtered by anti-spam stuff (though it is not spam).

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers.

PHP Code:


			
if (isset($_POST['mlmessage'])) {
$subject=$_POST['mlsub'];
$message=$_POST['mlmessage'];

$mdate=mktime();
mysql_query("INSERT INTO mlmessage (message,mdate,subject) VALUES ('$message',$mdate,'$subject')");
$ml_id=mysql_result(mysql_query("SELECT id FROM mlmessage WHERE message='$message'"),0);

    $addresses=array();
    $q=mysql_query("SELECT email,id FROM students WHERE e1onlist=1");
    while ($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($q)){
    array_push($addresses,array($r['email'],$r['id']));
    }
    $q=mysql_query("SELECT email2,id FROM students WHERE e2onlist=1");
    while ($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($q)){
    array_push($addresses,array($r['email2'],$r['id']));
    }
    
    $from_email="us@our-site.com";
    $from_name="us";
    foreach($addresses as $address) {
    $email=$address[0];
    $stu_id=$address[1];
    mysql_query("INSERT INTO mlmessage_who (stu_id, message_id, email) VALUES ('$stu_id','$ml_id','$email')");
    $message=stripslashes($message);
    sendMail($email, $subject, $message, $from_email, $from_name);
    }
        header("Location: http://$ipaddress/path/index.php?page=maillistmail&mess=sent");
}

Vege · 10-03-2009, 04:03 PM

Checking logs will tell you the correct error, but 99% of the cases it's because you need to time it out.
mail+smtp usually fails after around 200 messages as (if i remember correctly) it requires a new HELO message to SMTP server.

Cront it and send 100 messages every 5 mins.

Thats what we do in a system that needs to send up to thousands of emails.
Have you logged the sendmail error?

BonRouge · 10-04-2009, 12:37 AM

Vege,
Thanks for the reply.
I checked the errorlog of that directory and there was no recorded error on the day that email was sent out. (There were many more errors which I'd never checked before, but nothing on that day).
How would I cront this? I'm not familiar with that. I thought maybe you meant 'cron', but ....
Thanks again for the help.

Vege · 10-04-2009, 06:08 AM

Cront is a mystical beast that lives in nevernever land.
Easy mistake to make. Ye, i men't cron.

BonRouge · 10-04-2009, 11:26 AM

But anyway, how would I cron that? I mean, I use cron to do daily backups and checks on certain things. How would I use cron in this context (sending an email to a changing group of people)?

Thanks for the help.

Vege · 10-04-2009, 12:33 PM

php has a command line version.

Quote:

php -f filename.php

cron that php file to be run every 5 minutes and change the script accordingly.

BonRouge · 10-10-2009, 02:58 PM

Vege,
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I took your advice. I changed a few things in the script and the database and used cron. I can't say how successful it is yet, because we send out mass emails about once a month, but I'm guessing it'll be good.
Thanks again for your input.