simplenews - Bouncing emails, Background colour & other issues
Description I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews. 1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list) 2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings? 3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible to read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this? 4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors. thanks in advance -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
1. Bounce handling is not yet present in simplenews, but is one of the things that is on the road map, there are some ideas/pieces of code in the issue queue of simplenews that can help allready. Check the mail directory on your server as bounced emails can end up there. Check also the simplenews questionnaire http://simplenews.erikstielstra.nl/ to see more of the stuff that could improve simplenews. 2. Put initial send time to 0 otherwise you will have newletters send out multiple times (I had between 2 and 7 times, see also http://drupal.org/node/125865) to the same subscriber. 100 and 10 minutes could be ok, but will depend also on the traffic your server is having. At night sending a batch of 100 newsletters can easily take 5 times less time than during the most busy hours of the day. Ask simplenews to log the sending and check watchdog to see how long it takes to send the 100 mails and adjust cron time accordingly, you can still do this when the sending has started. Give some extra time as a buffer as too short time between cron runs will also cause newsletters to be send out multiple times due to cron overrun. 3. In tinymce select the last option and select for css: "use tinymce default" (this is probably on use theme css for you). 4. I have used simplenews for over 35000 subscribers so the number is not a problem. Just give more than enough time to get the newsletters out to prevent cron overrun and doubles send out. The main disadvantages of simplenews are stuff that are also mentioned in the questionnaire like bounce handling and statistics (even a basic question as are my newsletters read is not answered, let alone the fancy statistics you have on commercial applications). Theming seemed a problem for me at first sight but with a bit of searching I found the solution to that and described it in http://drupal.org/node/268404. I have not used mailman, but I know you can setup a workflow which integrates mailman with Drupal. Good luck, Hans 2008/8/22 geniekids <ratadi2@gmail.com>
Description
I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews.
1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list)
2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings?
3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible to read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this?
4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors.
thanks in advance -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
-- Hans Rossel KOBA Webdevelopment Kerkstraat 228 9050 Gent 09-334.52.60 0472-79.32.16 www.koba.be info@koba.be
Thanks a ton for the wonderfully detailed response. Helped me a lot. Have filled up the questionnaire. Will continue to use simplenews with MORE confidence. :-) KOBA | Hans Rossel wrote:
1. Bounce handling is not yet present in simplenews, but is one of the things that is on the road map, there are some ideas/pieces of code in the issue queue of simplenews that can help allready. Check the mail directory on your server as bounced emails can end up there. Check also the simplenews questionnaire http://simplenews.erikstielstra.nl/ to see more of the stuff that could improve simplenews.
2. Put initial send time to 0 otherwise you will have newletters send out multiple times (I had between 2 and 7 times, see also http://drupal.org/node/125865) to the same subscriber. 100 and 10 minutes could be ok, but will depend also on the traffic your server is having. At night sending a batch of 100 newsletters can easily take 5 times less time than during the most busy hours of the day. Ask simplenews to log the sending and check watchdog to see how long it takes to send the 100 mails and adjust cron time accordingly, you can still do this when the sending has started. Give some extra time as a buffer as too short time between cron runs will also cause newsletters to be send out multiple times due to cron overrun.
3. In tinymce select the last option and select for css: "use tinymce default" (this is probably on use theme css for you).
4. I have used simplenews for over 35000 subscribers so the number is not a problem. Just give more than enough time to get the newsletters out to prevent cron overrun and doubles send out. The main disadvantages of simplenews are stuff that are also mentioned in the questionnaire like bounce handling and statistics (even a basic question as are my newsletters read is not answered, let alone the fancy statistics you have on commercial applications). Theming seemed a problem for me at first sight but with a bit of searching I found the solution to that and described it in http://drupal.org/node/268404. I have not used mailman, but I know you can setup a workflow which integrates mailman with Drupal.
Good luck,
Hans
2008/8/22 geniekids <ratadi2@gmail.com>
Description
I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews.
1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list)
2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings?
3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible to read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this?
4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors.
thanks in advance -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
-- Hans Rossel KOBA Webdevelopment Kerkstraat 228 9050 Gent 09-334.52.60 0472-79.32.16 www.koba.be info@koba.be
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
I tried my second newsletter with painful results - it seem to have NOT at all got delivered - atleast to most emails. 1. My database is 9000+ strong. 2. When i did a test - everything seemed fine (i did test on two email - gmail and yahoo - to each was fine. 3. Cron throttle was set to 50 with the poormanscron set to trigger every 8 minutes (making it 350-400 emails per hour (less than 500 limit that my host puts) i "sent" the newsletter to the whole list at 17:45pm (approx) the watchdog shows an entry at 18:35 showing at cron run - "Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 4 sec." the watchdog shows a "newsletter message " notice at 17:54 Newsletter Programs for Parents could not be sent to gbs@xxxxxx.com (this looks like a bounced email so far so good i get 10 "bounced message like above at 17:54 and a whooping 48 bounced messages at 18:02 (which would have been the next cron throttle after 17:54) 38 bounced messages at 18:10 only 4 bounced messages at 18:18 3 bounced messages at 18:26 6 bounced messages at 18:35 24 bounced messages at 18:43 4 bounced messages at 18:51 and surprising no further error messages When I checked the newsletter status in night – around 21.00 hrs – it showed “sent” Which obviously means that it has not sent further emails than 18:51 – because to send 9000+ - t should have taken more than 24 hours!!! The watchdog shows cron running every 8 minutes – but shows the following for newsletter “27 Aug 2008 - 19:00 Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 0 sec. which would mean that there were no further emails sent after 19:00 hrs My Questions: 1. Why did it stop sending emails after some 8 cron throttles? 2. 2. How will I know how many? 3. Why did it show the “sent” status when in fact it did not send the same? How do I know - for sure – in future - that delivery has been done – to all emails – because a mere sent is not telling the right story! 4. Which other errors should I look at? Php? I get the following error which I was getting in my first newsletter sent also – but at that time emails were delivered QUOTE mail() [ function.mail function.mail ]: Could not execute mail delivery program '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i' in /home/genie/public_html/modules/mimemail/mimemail.module on line 279. UNQUOTE Any guidance would be most welcome geniekids wrote:
Description
I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews.
1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list)
2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings?
3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible to read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this?
4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors.
thanks in advance
-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
I would certainly look into that error with mimemail because your html mails are send via mimemail, so you want to be sure mimemail gives no errors. Check mimemail settings, sendmail path and permissions. Does the normal emailing of lost password functions normally on your site? Check logs, reinstall mimemail if necessary. I never had errors with mimemail. Did you use poormanscron? There is a setting for poormanscron which will log cron progress which you should turn on to be able to check what is happening. While sending you can only check which subscribers have received their newsletter by looking at the database: in the table simplenews_subscriptions the s_status column shows 1 when the newsletter has arrived at this user and 0 when not yet. They are reset at 0 when they all are sent. This way of checking how many mails have been sent is of course not userfriendly and I talked about it to the maintainer of simplenews and his arguments not to make this value visible as a progress bar is that admins might send several newsletters simultaniously and then the values are not correct anymore. I'm not sure about this and think it is not so common to send several newsletters at the same time, but you never know. Hans 2008/8/28 geniekids <ratadi2@gmail.com>
I tried my second newsletter with painful results - it seem to have NOT at all got delivered - atleast to most emails. 1. My database is 9000+ strong. 2. When i did a test - everything seemed fine (i did test on two email - gmail and yahoo - to each was fine. 3. Cron throttle was set to 50 with the poormanscron set to trigger every 8 minutes (making it 350-400 emails per hour (less than 500 limit that my host puts)
i "sent" the newsletter to the whole list at 17:45pm (approx)
the watchdog shows an entry at 18:35 showing at cron run - "Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 4 sec."
the watchdog shows a "newsletter message " notice at 17:54 Newsletter Programs for Parents could not be sent to gbs@xxxxxx.com (this looks like a bounced email
so far so good
i get 10 "bounced message like above at 17:54 and a whooping 48 bounced messages at 18:02 (which would have been the next cron throttle after 17:54) 38 bounced messages at 18:10 only 4 bounced messages at 18:18 3 bounced messages at 18:26 6 bounced messages at 18:35 24 bounced messages at 18:43 4 bounced messages at 18:51 and surprising no further error messages
When I checked the newsletter status in night – around 21.00 hrs – it showed "sent" Which obviously means that it has not sent further emails than 18:51 – because to send 9000+ - t should have taken more than 24 hours!!!
The watchdog shows cron running every 8 minutes – but shows the following for newsletter "27 Aug 2008 - 19:00 Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 0 sec. which would mean that there were no further emails sent after 19:00 hrs
My Questions: 1. Why did it stop sending emails after some 8 cron throttles? 2. 2. How will I know how many? 3. Why did it show the "sent" status when in fact it did not send the same? How do I know - for sure – in future - that delivery has been done – to all emails – because a mere sent is not telling the right story! 4. Which other errors should I look at? Php? I get the following error which I was getting in my first newsletter sent also – but at that time emails were delivered QUOTE mail() [ function.mail function.mail ]: Could not execute mail delivery program '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i' in /home/genie/public_html/modules/mimemail/mimemail.module on line 279. UNQUOTE
Any guidance would be most welcome
geniekids wrote:
Description
I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews.
1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list)
2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings?
3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible
to
read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this?
4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors.
thanks in advance
-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
-- Hans Rossel KOBA Webdevelopment Kerkstraat 228 9050 Gent 09-334.52.60 0472-79.32.16 www.koba.be info@koba.be
Only one instance of cron can run at a time. If a second instance of cron starts before the previous one is done, it will stop. So in your case, if an instance of cron takes more than 8 minutes to run and the next one tries to start, it will instantly stop and have a 0 sec run time. Regular cron displays a log message stating something like only one instance of cron can run at a time. I don't know what poor man's cron does in this situation. The bounce messages will have some text describing the reason they were bounced. Some system messages are more useful than others. With that many messages you have a good chance of finding a clue. The error in your point 4 is bizarre. With that error I wouldn't expect any mail to get through at all. Since you described test mail getting through, this is either happening selectively or perhaps is an old error. As Hans pointed out, you'll want to check the individual bits along the mail path to insure they're working. On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 2:38 AM, KOBA | Hans Rossel <info@koba.be> wrote:
I would certainly look into that error with mimemail because your html mails are send via mimemail, so you want to be sure mimemail gives no errors. Check mimemail settings, sendmail path and permissions. Does the normal emailing of lost password functions normally on your site? Check logs, reinstall mimemail if necessary. I never had errors with mimemail.
Did you use poormanscron? There is a setting for poormanscron which will log cron progress which you should turn on to be able to check what is happening.
While sending you can only check which subscribers have received their newsletter by looking at the database: in the table simplenews_subscriptions the s_status column shows 1 when the newsletter has arrived at this user and 0 when not yet. They are reset at 0 when they all are sent. This way of checking how many mails have been sent is of course not userfriendly and I talked about it to the maintainer of simplenews and his arguments not to make this value visible as a progress bar is that admins might send several newsletters simultaniously and then the values are not correct anymore. I'm not sure about this and think it is not so common to send several newsletters at the same time, but you never know.
Hans
2008/8/28 geniekids <ratadi2@gmail.com>
I tried my second newsletter with painful results - it seem to have NOT at all got delivered - atleast to most emails. 1. My database is 9000+ strong. 2. When i did a test - everything seemed fine (i did test on two email - gmail and yahoo - to each was fine. 3. Cron throttle was set to 50 with the poormanscron set to trigger every 8 minutes (making it 350-400 emails per hour (less than 500 limit that my host puts)
i "sent" the newsletter to the whole list at 17:45pm (approx)
the watchdog shows an entry at 18:35 showing at cron run - "Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 4 sec."
the watchdog shows a "newsletter message " notice at 17:54 Newsletter Programs for Parents could not be sent to gbs@xxxxxx.com (this looks like a bounced email
so far so good
i get 10 "bounced message like above at 17:54 and a whooping 48 bounced messages at 18:02 (which would have been the next cron throttle after 17:54) 38 bounced messages at 18:10 only 4 bounced messages at 18:18 3 bounced messages at 18:26 6 bounced messages at 18:35 24 bounced messages at 18:43 4 bounced messages at 18:51 and surprising no further error messages
When I checked the newsletter status in night – around 21.00 hrs – it showed "sent" Which obviously means that it has not sent further emails than 18:51 – because to send 9000+ - t should have taken more than 24 hours!!!
The watchdog shows cron running every 8 minutes – but shows the following for newsletter "27 Aug 2008 - 19:00 Executed simplenews_cron via poormanscron, took 0 sec. which would mean that there were no further emails sent after 19:00 hrs
My Questions: 1. Why did it stop sending emails after some 8 cron throttles? 2. 2. How will I know how many? 3. Why did it show the "sent" status when in fact it did not send the same? How do I know - for sure – in future - that delivery has been done – to all emails – because a mere sent is not telling the right story! 4. Which other errors should I look at? Php? I get the following error which I was getting in my first newsletter sent also – but at that time emails were delivered QUOTE mail() [ function.mail function.mail ]: Could not execute mail delivery program '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i' in /home/genie/public_html/modules/mimemail/mimemail.module on line 279. UNQUOTE
Any guidance would be most welcome
geniekids wrote:
Description
I tried my first email newsletter with simplenews.
1. How does simple news handle bounced emails. I am mailing to 7000+ emails. Surely many emails will get bounced. But i did not get any email in the sender email box. Is there a way to check that and get the list of bouncing emails ids. (to clean up the list)
2. I have set Cron throttle to 100 and set Initial send time: 2seconds (default value)). Cron using poormanscron is set to run every 10 minutes. Ae these appropriate settings?
3. Also while composing i had not put any background colour and formatted the html email in TINYMCE. During delivery - only to yahoo email ids - it is adding a ugly background colour which is making it almost impossible to read the email. This is not happening in gmail or hotmail! What could be causing this?
4. Also fundamentally is simple news the "right choice" for emailing something to a large number like 7000+ emails. Should i be looking at some other module or any other mailing package - any recommendations - is mailman a better choice. Though i love the integration of simple news into the drupal website and ease of subscribing offered to the visitors.
thanks in advance
-- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/simplenews---Bouncing-emails%2C-Background-colour---ot... Sent from the Drupal - Support mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
-- Hans Rossel KOBA Webdevelopment Kerkstraat 228 9050 Gent 09-334.52.60 0472-79.32.16 www.koba.be info@koba.be
-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
participants (3)
-
Dale McGladdery -
geniekids -
KOBA | Hans Rossel