SMF2.0:Mail

The Mail section of the Administration Panel is the section for viewing the current mail queue of your forum, as well as for configuring several email related settings. Settings include whether you want to use PHP's sendmail to send your emails or use an SMTP server, as well as which birthday email to send out to members with birthdays.

There are two tabs in this section of the Administration Panel:

Browse Queue
The Mail Queue page allows you to view the queue of mail that has not yet been sent on your forum. The one action you can perform on this page is processing all of the mail queue. To send out all this mail, select the Send Mail Queue Now link at the the bottom of the page. The delete button can be used to delete mail from the queue either in bulk or by checking boxes.

Above, you can see how many emails are pending to be sent in the queue, the queue length, and the oldest email waiting to be sent.

The table that lists the emails awaiting to be sent contains the following information:


 * Subject - The subject of the email.
 * Recipient - The username of the member who is to receive the email.
 * Priority - The priority of the email. If the email has a high priority, it is more likely to be sent out sooner.
 * Age - How long the email has been pending in the queue, and when it was first requested to be sent out.

Mail Settings
The Mail Settings page allows you to configure settings that relate to the sending of emails from your forum and the queue to help keep a healthy load for when a large number of emails are to be sent out.

The following settings can be configured on this page:


 *  Enable Mail Queue - Enable the Mail Queue. If this option is not checked, the system will act like previous versions of SMF and send emails straight out instead of adding them to the queue.
 * Maximum emails to send per minute - Set how many emails per minute you want to be sent. If your host sets a limit of emails per hour, you should divide that number by 60 and use that number or a lower number in this field.
 * Maximum amount of emails to send per page load - Set how many emails per page load to send if any emails exist in the queue. ! Note: Setting this to a higher number can cause pages to take longer to be displayed.
 * Mail type - This allows you to select either the default PHP mail program or your mail server. Fill in the details of your outgoing mail server if you did not select PHP.
 * SMTP server - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP server.
 * SMTP port - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP port.
 * SMTP username - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP username.
 * SMTP password - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP password and enter again below that to confirm. ! Note: SMTP details are provided by your host.
 * Birthday Message to use - Select the birthday message you wish to send to members when it is their birthday. (These were created by community members of simplemachines.org in a contest). You can select one from the selection box and preview what it would send.
 * Email Subject / Email Body - These fields are not editable here and only give a preview of the Birthday message you have selected.