Re: [cobalt-users] PHP mailing list on RaQ4i 256

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Si Watts" <simon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>One of my site clients has managed to collect just short of 5000 email
> addresses from his customers when they have made purchases in his bricks
and
> mortar store. He wishes for me to write him a mailing list program to
manage
> these addresses and enable him to send a marketing message to each one of
> them in turn, quickly and easily (the same message to all addresses)

OK.

> I guess my question is to whether PHP would be allowed to actually deliver
> that volume of mail to sendmail before the script times out (still set to
> default 30 seconds AFAIK)?

Sure.  You can change max execution time by adding set_time_limit( <# of
seconds> ); to the script.  You may also want to use sleep() periodically in
the script so you don't overload Sendmail.

> Addresses will be stored and retrieved from MySQL db. Essentially would
the
> script sending 5000 emails to sendmail in one drop cause it to crash/lock
or
> would only a proportion of the messages ever arrive at sendmail due to
spool
> size limitations?

You may want to tweak sendmail.cf if the default Sendmail config. doesn't
handle the volume/frequency you need.

> Similarly would sending this volume have other detremental effects on the
> overall servers ability to do it other tasks?

Not if it's managed properly.  BTW, is each email going to be personalized?
As in will each email mention the recipient's name in the body or subject of
the message?  If not, I'd strongly suggest considering writing a script to
dump the recipient list to a Majordomo or Mailman user list and using one of
those MLMs to do the dirty work.  If the emails will be high volume, high
frequency you might also want to consider a program like bulk mailer or TLB
to sort the recipient list by domain and pass off the recipient list in
appropriate sized chunks to reduce load and fail to trigger spam detectors
at places like AOL (this is a balancing act).

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/