Re: Speed of sending email .. can I put them in a queue rather than wait?

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 02:02:18PM +1000, Angus Mann wrote: > Hi all. > > I'm currently using the phpmailer class from phpmailer.worxware.com to send datatbase > -populated emails to clients. > > At the moment I'm runninng PHP on Windows and using the built-in sendmail equivalent > packaged with XAMPP. It uses a remote SMTP that authenticates by prior logging into a POP account. > > The number of emails sent is very small. Each one is only sent after a user fills out a form > and presses send. > > But there is a noticable lag of about 5 or sometimes 10 seconds after pressing "send" > before the user sees the "Mail sent" page. I presume the reason for the lag is the time > spent logging on and off a remote POP, then SMTP server, transferring the data etc. > > It would be better if this happened in the background - that is, the user could get on with > doing his next task while the emails sat in a queue in the backgorund, being lined up and sent > without PHP waiting for the process to finish. > > Can anybody recommend a good way of doing this? Is Mercury Mail going to help me here? > If this were me, I'd set up a mailserver on the web machine and send mail to it instead of using phpmailer to connect directly to a distant mailserver. The authentication between phpmailer and the local mailserver should be near instantaneous, and you can let the local mailserver deal with transferring mails in its own sweet time. I don't know if there's a mailserver included in XAMPP installations, but if so, I'd do that. In fact, if you're just sending simple emails, you could use PHP's built-in mail() function, which will connect directly to the local mailserver without further configuration. Paul -- Paul M. Foster