RE: newsletter optimization help needed

Miles Thompson <milesthompson@ns.sympatico.ca> · Wed, 12 Mar 2003 14:30:57 -0400

I've been doing that with a much smaller list, and we periodically run into 
problems with subscribers SPAM filter, double-propagation of some 
addresses, etc.  I think the days of bcc: are numbered.

The approach we're working on now is to send an URL to subscribers. They 
click on that and view the newsletter through Flash player.

As for Chris's problem, I don't know. I'd be tempted to have the PHP script 
pass a set of parameters to a Python script and then end. When the Python 
script completes have that email the results to the user. A friend of mine 
used a similar process to handle requests for huge amounts of geological 
data. The parameters were passed to the database which generated the file 
and called a script to mail them. The original page was long since gone.

Miles

At 09:56 AM 3/12/2003 -0800, SELPH,JASON (HP-Richardson,ex1) wrote:
You could change the TO: to something generic like "Email List Subscriber"
then add everyone to the BCC field and then generate 1 email with 9000
people in the BCC field.  Let sendmail do the rest.  It should take less
time to send the emails and only a few seconds to generate your page.

Cheers
Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Payne [mailto:cjp@planetoxygene.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 11:41 AM
To: php-db@lists.php.net
Subject:  newsletter optimization help needed

Hi there Everyone,

Below is some code I use to send a newsletter to clients subscribed on my
mailing list.  The problem is I have over
9000+ email addresses in the DB and it takes around 30-45 minutes to
send them with the below code.

Can anyone see someway I can optimize it so it sends out the newsletter any
faster?  I've probably gone about this system the long way, but it works - I
just need to find a way to make it faster :-(

Thanks everyone

All the best

Chris

---

<?

$connection = mysql_connect("localhost","Username","Password") or
die("Couldn't make a connection.");

$db = mysql_select_db("WhateverDB", $connection)
            or die("Couldn't select database.");

$sql = "SELECT *
        FROM emailtest";

$sql_result = mysql_query($sql,$connection)
            or die("Couldn't execute query.");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result)) {
            $emailadd = $row["EMail"];
            $emailname = $row["emailname"];
            $emailphone = $row["emailphone"];
            $emailaddress = $row["emailaddress"];

$MP = "sendmail -t";
$HT = "<html><body>";
$HT = "</body></html>";
$subject = "$subject";
$NOTE = "$emailtests";

$NOTE = str_replace("*email*", "$emailadd", $NOTE);
$NOTE = str_replace("*name*", "$emailname", $NOTE);
$NOTE = str_replace("*phone*", "$emailphone", $NOTE);
$NOTE = str_replace("*address*", "$emailaddress", $NOTE);

$TO = "$emailadd";
$fd = popen($MP,"w");
fputs($fd,"MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n");
fputs($fd,"Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"); fputs($fd,
"To: $TO\n");
fputs($fd, "From: sales@me.com\n");
fputs($fd, "Subject: $subject\n");
fputs($fd, "X-Mailer: PHP3\n");
fputs($fd, "Email: $email\n");
fputs($fd, "$HT");
fputs($fd, "$NOTE");
fputs($fd, "$EHT");

}

pclose($fd);
exit;

mysql_free_result($sql_result);
mysql_close($connection);
?>

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