Email Options

Enable the following email-sending features:
Report Bad Post
‘Contact Us’ Link
New Post Notifications to Members

• Variable Name: enableemail
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 1

Specify in seconds how much time must elapse before a user may send consecutive emails.

Set to 0 to disable this flood check. Admins are always exempt from this floodcheck.

• Variable Name: emailfloodtime
• Data Type: integer
• Default Value: 60

If enabled, vBulletin will send queued e-mails in batches using the scheduled task. You must set a sensible batch value and make sure queuing is enabled.

• Variable Name: mailqueue
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 1

The number of seconds delay before sending each e-mail. Use with caution. Normally you would set this only if you are hitting limits for your hosting account. Do not adjust this unless you understand the consequences.

• Variable Name: mail_delay
• Data Type: integer
• Default Value: 0

When enabled, subscription emails generated by your site will be processed in batches to lessen the load on your server. Account activation, lost passwords and other vital emails are sent instantly regardless of this setting. If your site has low traffic, subscription emails may be delayed.

If you have a large site, you may wish to enable locking. This prevents a rare situation where the same email is sent multiple times.

• Variable Name: usemailqueue
• Data Type: number
• Default Value: 1

Emails sent to moderators when new posts are made will be sent immediately instead of being added to the queue. This will ensure prompt notification, but it can cause a noticeable delay when saving the post.

This is only applicable when the emails are queued.

• Variable Name: skip_queue_for_new_post_emails
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 1

vBulletin includes a mail queuing system to prevent bottlenecks when sending lots of email. Use this option to specify how many emails will be sent per batch.

• Variable Name: emailsendnum
• Data Type: integer
• Default Value: 10

The email address where bounce messages will be directed. If this field is blank, the Webmaster Email address will be used.

This email is used when using an SMTP server, or when the ‘Enable -f Parameter’ email for sendmail is switched on.

• Variable Name: bounceemail
• Data Type: free
• Default Value:

Some sendmail servers may require the ‘-f’ parameter to be sent with email calls from PHP. If you are having problems with users not receiving email, try enabling this option. In all likelihood, your problem will not be caused by this setting.

• Variable Name: needfromemail
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value:

Mail servers using Exchange will send auto responders unless you mark your email as bulk mail. While there is no documented case of emails being marked as spam directly due to this header, there is no guarantee what other mail servers will do with this header.

Set this option to ‘yes’ if you are getting tired of all the auto responders in your webmaster email from Exchange servers.

• Variable Name: usebulkheader
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 0

If this is set to ‘Yes’ then emails will be reencoded to UTF-8 before sending, if possible.

• Variable Name: utf8encode
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 0

Set this option to yes to use an SMTP server rather than the internal PHP mail() function.

• Variable Name: use_smtp
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value:

If you’ve enabled SMTP mail, please specify the host here. You may find that specifying an IP Address rather than a domain name, results in better performance. Example: smtp.gmail.com

• Variable Name: smtp_host
• Data Type: free
• Default Value:

If you’ve enabled SMTP mail, please specify the port here.

• Variable Name: smtp_port
• Data Type: integer
• Default Value: 25

If you’ve enabled SMTP mail and your server requires authentication, please specify your username here.

• Variable Name: smtp_user
• Data Type: free
• Default Value:

If you’ve enabled SMTP mail and your server requires authentication, please specify your password here.

• Variable Name: smtp_pass
• Data Type: free
• Default Value:

If you’ve enabled SMTP mail and your server requires a TLS connection, please set this to yes. This requires OpenSSL support to be compiled into PHP.

• Variable Name: smtp_tls
• Data Type: free
• Default Value: none

If you want to include extra smtp header information, add it here.

• Variable Name: extra_smtp_headers
• Data Type: free
• Default Value:

If enabled, this will send the user an email on their birthday except for certain groups (banned users, users awaiting activation or moderation, or user groups with birthday displays disabled).

Users can also disable the birthday email or all admin emails in their user settings.

• Variable Name: enablebirthdayemails
• Data Type: boolean
• Default Value: 1

Users whose last visit is more than this many days will not receive a birthday email. This prevents people who signed up a long while ago and forgotten from getting emails they consider spam.

Enter a value of 0 if you want to send email to all users regardless of activity.

• Variable Name: birthdayemaillookback
• Data Type: number
• Default Value: 365