|  | Posted by Nuno Pereira on 06/11/29 11:26 
Miles Thompson wrote:> At 10:50 AM 9/12/2005, Ryan A wrote:
 >
 >> Hi,
 >> My client has a dating site and now he wants to mail all his members,
 >> he does not want to use any of the already installed mailing lists but
 >> wants
 >> us to make one
 >> for him, he's on a dedicated server.
 >>
 >> Presently he does not have too many members, just a few thousand
 >> (around 3k
 >> i guess),
 >> I remember reading sometime back on the list that using the mail() may
 >> not
 >> be the best
 >> option...not sure if thats still true.
 >>
 >> The thing that bothers me the most is if the program times out..., how
 >> do I
 >> start again from
 >> the ones that have not been sent?
 >>
 >> eg:
 >> (10 members)
 >> mail gets sent to first 4 members then times out
 >> we re-click on the send button and it starts again from one...again times
 >> out
 >> (this happens 5 times)
 >>
 >> that means members 1-4 will get the same email 5 times
 >>
 >> Doing this the hard way would be to connect to the db after each
 >> successful
 >> mail and "mark"
 >> each member with todays date or something...but I would like to avoid so
 >> many calls to the
 >> DB if possible...esp if the site grows.
 >>
 >> Ideas/suggestions?
 >>
 >> Thanks in advance,
 >> Ryan
 >>
 >> Addition to my prev msg ...
 >
 >
 > We don't have access to cron processes on our ISP's server, so the
 > nightly mailing goes out as a scheduled job from a Windows XP box.
 
 You can have your own cron processes. See man crontab. Try "crontab -e"
 with your user, in a shell login. But the admin can forbid users install
 their jobs in a crontab.
 
 > We have maybe three glitches per year:
 >         1. user forgets and shuts  the box down,
 >         2. forgets and turns off the script, or
 >         3. the power fails and machine is not set up to automatically
 > reboot and feed itself her password.
 >
 > This is all "livable-with".
 >
 > Cheers - Miles
 
 --
 Nuno Pereira
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