[pmwiki-users] Newsletter throttling

[marc]

The Editor said...
> On 10/29/06, Crisses <crisses at kinhost.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On Oct 29, 2006, at 11:31 AM, The Editor wrote:
> >>
> >> Next, set cron (I don't really know anything about this, but I think
> >> you can use it to run a php script on a schedule?). Cron calls a
> >> separate php function that checks for any text files in the queue with
> >> a name less than 60 minutes old, retrieves the corresponding message,
> >> and mails it out. Then, it deletes that list and quits the function.
> >
> > PmWiki doesn't require linux or crontab access to run.  It runs sidetasks
> > like sending out email announcements on the side when people hit a page on
> > the site.
> >
> > I suggest you look at NotifyPosts, and hook your email sending scripts to
> > take advantage of the same mechanisms PmWiki already uses.
> 
> I've begun nosing around but not sure I understand how PmWiki triggers
> it.  I could perhaps link it to a login script, or any zap function
> for that matter.  But what would happen say if no one logged in for
> several hours?  It might either send out several hours worth of emails
> (breaking my limit) or skip some. (Or I could dynamically rename all
> the address files... Yuck.  It might also mean my newsletter might
> take days to get out if the traffic were slow.  Am I understanding you
> right?

Try this for some background:

  http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/11/03/web-bugs-for-job-scheduling-
hack-or-solution/

  http://www.bitfolge.de/?l=en&s=pseudocron

Also,

  http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89660&goto=nextoldest

Note the comments on SMTP and PHP ignore+_user_abort

I'm not recommending any of this, btw ;-) although pseudocron can be 
useful; I'm sure we could turn it into a recipe.

-- 
Best,
Marc