Posted by Miles Thompson on 10/07/09 11:26

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.

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

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