Unable to send email to X email address :(

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Hi everyone I have a tough one and very urgent as well.
My forum says that he has been unable to send an email from an announced topic but not to everybody. It seems that it randomly sent a few ones but not all of them. It gave me around 20 errors so too many

The error is this one:
Type of error: General
http://vige.altervista.org/forum/index.php?action=announce;sa=send
Unable to send mail to the email address '[email protected]'

When I try to click on the link it returns this (that is *way* more absurd to me)

"An Error Has Occurred!
You are not allowed to announce topics on this board."

What? I have admin permissions! And boards settings are set up properly so that I can announce topics anywhere... Trying with another browser didn't solve it (useless test but at least I tried...). Any ideas? It's pretty urgent too... I need that announcement done asap...
Thanks in advance as always

[Illori]

that url is not valid to send an announcement, so it fails with an error.

[margarett]

You shouldn't click the URL. As Illori says, it's not a valid "navigation" URL, it's the URL SMF uses in said action, and that's what keeps recorded

As for the error, well, there are a ton of reasons why that fails... You should probably ask your host to check what's the reason behind that.
Or, try to send that email from your webmaster's account (usually accessible in cPanel). You should get a bounced mail with the reason

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Here we go.
Sorry for the late reply.
I contacted my host and they kindly admitted (with me swearing at them so badly) that there is a limit to the emails being sent. That limit is 3 emails every 2 seconds (so VERY low!).
I have been Googling a *LOT* and could find some stuff where there were people saying "use BCC" and stuff like that but any of those posts was clear and only one of them was for SMF (with no answer, made by a team member!).
So here's my question: hod can I do that? How can I send announcements and also private messages notifications using that BCC (if I actually need to use it)? How can I bypass that limit? It's vital to me as there will be also tickets notifications...

[margarett]

No, that's unrelated...

You can't use BBC because SMF will not send HTML mails. Therefore, any formatting will be lost.

What you need is to enable SMF's mail queue. 3 mails every 2 seconds are 90 mails per minute. It's not as low as you might think.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

BBC

I guess you were meaning BCC

Yes but when the database will be bigger there will be also private messages and tickets form simpledesk. Will they be considered in the aforementioned queue?

And will it work like this?

Koodi [Valitse] Laajenna

Enable Mail Queue Maximum emails to send per minute 80 (not to get completely borderline)
Maximum amount of emails to send per page load 0

I don't know whether I have to setup the second option in a different way.

And thanks for your very kind reply as always 

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

*bump*

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

*BUMP!* 

[mashby]

Have you set your queue to 90 as margarett suggested?

What you need is to enable SMF's mail queue. 3 mails every 2 seconds are 90 mails per minute. It's not as low as you might think.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Thanks for your reply.
I am a bit afraid of doing that without being 100% sure of what that other button means. As I don't have time to install it and test it locally I will have only one chance to do this: the first. So I can't make a mistake.
I could set that to 80 (I just want to stay a little away from that limit just in case ) but this button

Maximum amount of emails to send per page load 0

what does it mean? Do I need to set it up in a different way as well?

[mashby]

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=287725.0

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Thanks for the link but I still don't get how I could possibly make it work in order to fit my needs.
If SMF sends 80 emails in that minute but it sends them all in the first second then 77 won't be sent as I have a limit that is 3 emails every 2 seconds. So I need it to be done nice and slow, well not that slow but no "loads" of emails. Though, if I set up even "1" in that box if there are just more than 3 users online it will hit that limit as every page load an email would be sent, breaking that limit in no time and failing hard. Am I wrong?

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

*bump*

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

*bump* 
Please I really need an answer for this. This is the most important thing I need to know.
P.s. Sorry for bumping slightly before 24 hours but I am going to sleep xD

[margarett]

If SMF sends 80 emails in that minute but it sends them all in the first second then 77 won't be sent as I have a limit that is 3 emails every 2 seconds.

Exactly... You can have dropped emails, yes. But SMF will not send them all in the first second

Koodi [Valitse] Laajenna

// By default send 5 at once.
if (!$number)
$number = empty($modSettings['mail_quantity']) ? 5 : $modSettings['mail_quantity'];

So you need to check with your host if it's possible to have that limit changed to "per-minutes" setting.

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Thank you for your reply margarett
AFAIK it's not... As it's a server-based thing. Can I change the SMF setup instead? Or if I just set that value to 1 would it work? I have no idea about how this works but it's my biggest problem atm...
Also I have no idea of where those strings are :/

[margarett]

That's Sources/ScheduledTasks.php, function "ReduceMailQueue".

I won't suggest you to try and change this behavior (I would have no idea how to do it!). I'd say you should have the mail queue at 2 per minute. Unless you get a BIG load of emails to send, it should flow more or less fast and guarantee that no emails are lost. You will be able to send 120 mails per hour, which should be enough.
The "extra" that I didn't considered should be reserved for emails that bypass the queue --> activation emails, etc.

Should work fine

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Thank you for your reply again
For now it will for sure but my forum will hopefully grow a lot when the game will be released so... 120 emails per hour mean 2740 emails per day... It won't be that much. Think about smf.org that has more than 200k people it would take almost 10 days to run such a task...

[margarett]

That's not entirely false
When a global email is sent here, it's quite common that people only receive it after some days. Not 10 days, but still, some days.

Do note that your host isn't really giving you few emails in total. If you exhausted your 3 emails each 2 seconds, that would mean 90 mails per minute --> 129600 mails each day. You would be flagged as spammer in every mail server out there!
What they have is a limit that isn't really nice to play with SMF

[Ninja ZX-10RR]

Thank you again
Hmm ok but still I am very afraid of hitting that limit without setting it properly.. If the default behaviour is to send like 5 at once then I'm done (done in a bad way) because I would be hitting it anyway... Or even if I set it at 1 it would be hitting hit... Could I open a topic in SMF Coding discussion asking how to change this behaviour? I think it's my best bet... I would choose the other one if I can't edit it but I'd rather edit it so that I can completely get it under control. I will be asking my host meantime but I don't think they will change their settings just for me...