Posted by d on 10/12/56 11:38

"Good Man" <heyho@letsgo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns975AF5E1FDAAsonicyouth@216.196.97.131...
> noone <noone@nowhere.com> wrote in
> news:7JYCf.15119$_S7.8945@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com:
>
>> again, use the right tool for the job at hand. While PHP can "talk"
>> to an smtp server, I do not believe it is the right tool for the job.
>> Kind-of like using a spoon to shovel the driveway. While it can do
>> it, is it the right tool for the job. If it were one or two emails at
>> the click of the mouse - fine, in fact I use phpmailer to do some
>> things for me. But to send 50+ emails - it is the wrong tool.
>
> i do not profess to be any sort of expert, but i use PHP to send out 3000+
> emails daily to a list of subscribers (via a cron job). I get all the
> addresses at once from MySQL, put them into an array, disconnect from the
> database, then use a 'mass e-mail' class to compose individual emails and
> send them. I just can't see any difference between PHP writing an email
> and handing it off to sendmail vs having outlook/thunderbird/etc writing
> an
> email and handing it off to sendmail.

Sendmail can't tell the difference, and doesn't give a damn what's sending
mail through it, as long as the mails are formatted correctly :)

> aren't PHP discussions regarding this type of online application
> irrelevant? after all, PHP has no trouble creating thousands of strings,
> arrays, text files, emails, zip files, etc. all very quickly. If there's
> anything to worry about, i'd figure it's the load capabilities of
> 'sendmail' or whatever your mail server is.

Exactly. That's why if you get your mailer script to send the mails in
batches, having a decent pause between batches, your mail server will have
no problem. As you say, it's the mail server that is the weak link, and as
long as you code with that in mind, php is a very great tool for mass
mailing.

dave

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