Sending emails in batches

Just a follow on from another recent thread now that I've at least established the problem and two possible solutions.

The problem is that with our current hosting, we cannot guarantee all emails as part of a mailshot are being sent because the script times out on the server. Unfortunately the UE methodology of trying to reset the script timeout value to zero doesn't work.

The two solutions appear to be:

1. move hosting to another provider that does not have this limitation.

2. change the script somehow so that it sends the mails in manageable batches rather than sent them as one total group.

It would be good to avoid moving hosts if possible, so I just wondered if anyone else had run into a similar issue, and if did you manage to resolve it?

Thanks.

to create batches,, you would need to modify the recordset to return a smaller result set

you could filter by id:

Where ID > 0 AND ID < 100

for the first batch, then use
Where ID > 100 AND ID < 200

for the next batch and so on.

Not sure that will work in this case, as the records that get an email sent are based on a search - so the IDs could be anything.

basically, you need to find a way to limit the search results to a manageable size to be able to send the emails in the time limit imposed by the server.

maybe try recordset paging on the results page.

Set the repeat region to limit to 30 or 40 records and add paging.

send the email on each page.

Thanks Jason - if UE will work like that, I'll give that a shot.

Probably better than the only other thing I'd come up with which was using the LIMIT function, and have two or three searches, each returning different records.

e.g. having three searches, and adding:

LIMIT 0, 100
LIMIT 100, 100
LIMIT 200, 100

to the end of each SQL query.

paging basically does the same thing, it just adds the limit to the query dynamically based on the paging links.

I'm just trying to add a simple enough recordset paging, limiting the attached page to three records to test.

But its showing all records still - could you have a quick look to see if you can see what's up? I'm guessing its to do with the code just above the Doctype declaration throwing it out. But it should be the right recordset - RS_Candidates.

I've added more info below, but hopefully it will be something simple that doesn't get too involved.

Thank you.

2 problems

1) the recordset at line 149 is hand coded so will not work with paging.


2) For paging to work, you need to use the Repeat region tool to limit the number of records that are displayed.

Thanks Jason - I thought that was probably the issue.

Can you just remind me where I go to change the settings for the mailshot in UE, i.e. the number of emails per minute and time between emails?

I have what I think is the right page open, but can't see anything obvious in the server behaviours panel.

edit the UE server behavior, click the to button to set the email limits.