produced using BigSender Friday, May 23, 2003 BigSender Broadcasts: Get the Speed You Need by Craig Richards You have your own reasons for switching your contact management to BigSender – It could be because management of contacts is much easier than Outlook or Outlook Express. Or maybe you want your messages personalized to each of your recipients. Among the most important reasons folks move up to BigSender, as we're told, is that their list has grown to the point that the slow send rate of other systems has become intolerable. Most BigSender licensees enjoy broadcast send rates in the neighborhood of 40,000+ messages per hour (on shared virtual servers). And those with domains on dedicated webservers are surpassing even those snappy rates. If you use BigSender or are considering a BigSender license for yourself or your organization, you'll want to read the handy tips below on optimizing BigSender and your server environment for the best possible throughput. Factors That Can Affect BigSender Broadcast Send Rates How's your connection? An "SMTP" BigSender Configurator setting for connecting to the mailserver is generally faster than a "path to sendmail" setting. Though it may be the same actual mailserver, connections via the "path to sendmail" can slow your send rate because sendmail performs more tasks on each outgoing message. Connecting via an "SMTP" Configurator setting such as "default SMTP" or "mail.yourdomain.com" or "123.456.78.9" has proven faster overall for most BigSender installations. Did you know that message size matters? It makes sense when you think about it that a smaller message will take less time to get through the mailserver than a larger one. Remember that in BigSender, message size is measured only by the amount of text and does not include images. That's because BigSender messages display images "inline" (not attached) which means they're downloaded as each recipient opens their email bypassing the mailserver resulting in significant increases in throughput over other email technologies. A busy mailserver is a slow mailserver Most mailservers associated with domains are set to handle both incoming (POP) and also outgoing (SMTP) services. Then during your broadcast, as reject notifications and other messages come into the mailserver, the tasks being performed simultaneously by the server may be significantly slowed. A mailserver shared among many domains can also represent a significant bottleneck in the broadcast rate when those domains' email services are active during your broadcast. Some concerns about the environment? Does your hosting firm, as most do, put their newest and most powerful machines to work as http (web) servers then recycle their older and slower machines as mailservers? Some smaller hosting firms even put the mailserver and the HTTP (web) server on the same machine. Does yours? MHz – generally, the higher the number, the more computing power RAM – more is always better. How is the mailserver's machine connected to the internet? Most hosting firms have high-bandwidth connections such as gigabit ethernet to a fiberoptic T3 or better. How's yours? Is your domain on a very busy HTTP server? Because BigSender is a web application and is deliberately engineered to perform up to the capacity of the environment in which it is running (without hogging CPU cycles critical to other processes), its throughput may be affected by any other processes that hog the webserver. Optimized for BigSender For each statement below that is true, BigSender can achieve faster send rates... Your outgoing message contains as few characters as possible and is not bloated with hundreds or perhaps thousands of extra characters – a notorious problem with HTML documents generated by WYSIWYG HTML editors. Lean and clean is what I mean. The BigSender "emails per interactive report" Configurator settings is set between 20 to 50. That helps keep your browser/server connection open so you can easily monitor the status of your broadcast session. The BigSender "pause frequency" Configurator settings is between 500 and 2500. You'll want the highest setting as possible before any HTTP or SMTP timeout errors occur. BigSender is set to connect to a mailserver via SMTP rather than the path to sendmail. That mailserver is not shared with other domains. That mailserver performs only SMTP services and does not perform POP services – this will boost your speed significantly if you can get it. That mailserver is set to perform as few operations on each outgoing message as possible. MX Lookup is disabled. The machine on which the mailserver resides has a high-bandwidth connection and has a fast CPU and is loaded with RAM. That mailserver's settings will not abort connections no matter the duration or number of continuous emails sent through it. Now that BigSender and your server environment are optimized, you you'll be able to focus on crafting your messages and more effectively grow your business. Now go spend some extra time with your loved-ones! For more information on how you can improve your communications with BigSender, contact Craig Richards Design at CGI@CraigRichards.com or visit the developer's website at CraigRichards.com Virtual regards, Craig Richards We hope you enjoyed reading this issue of News2Me – Please forward this message along to your friends and associates! For your reference, this message and previous issues of News2Me are archived at CraigRichards.com/news2me. Craig Richards Design is an online design and development firm in central Oregon headed by Craig Richards. For more than 28 years, Craig has juggled two careers, one as an accomplished television and film actor, and the other in marketing and advertising design. In 1994, he began designing and programming custom websites for his clients at ad agencies and also currently runs the web's most popular family history- and reunion-related website FamilyReunion.com. Over the years, Mr. Richards has developed several web applications and released them publicly as freeware, shareware and as commercial applications. Titles include BigSender, Envirolyzer and award-winning AdminPro with more than 120,000 users worldwide. Craig Richards Design was recently named an iForce Partner by Sun Microsystems for the creation of essential tools compatible with the Unix platform. powered by name email add   modify   remove   News2Me Archive News2Me 05/20/2006 In this issue: we discuss some hosting firms' anti-spam policies, our shiny new dedicated webserver, our discussion forum is temporarily disabled and improved transaction security at CraigRichards.com with high-grade 256-bit SSL encryption News2Me 02/21/2006 In this issue, we announce the launch of our new Discussion Board at forum.CraigRichards.com Craig Richards Design Plans BigSender Update to 3.70 in Early January This BigSender release further enhances the Message Composer interface with a realtime WYSIWYG HTML Editor, a plain-text wordwrap feature, an initial caps format for names and other handy improvements. BigSender Now Speaks Italian In addition to other improvements, fixes and enhancements, BigSender now includes an Italian BigSender Language File plug-in. News2Me In this issue, we announce our website's new search feature, information on my recent movie role and the latest enhancements to BigSender. News2Me: Imagine Contact Management Made Simpler What should you look for in a contact management solution? Power. Affordability. Flexibility. Simplicity. BigSender 3.670 Released: Breakthrough Features Innovative new features make BigSender 3 more powerful than ever! BigSender Technical Bulletin: Annotations BigSender 3.661 Gets Convenient New Features BigSender Reviewed by The Office Letter After an independent comprehensive evaluation of BigSender, The Office Letter concludes that, "for the money, it's a steal!" BigSender Now Speaks German BigSender Broadcasts: Get the Speed You Need How to optimize BigSender and your server environment for the fastest send rates possible. BigSender 3.6: Continuing the Revolution After more than six months in development, now you can match to whole records or only specific fields for the most granular narrowcasting! BigSender 3x: Now Even More Power and Flexibility Announcing the newest batch of features in our popular web application designed to make it simple to manage your contact lists and to easily publish your announcements, e-zines, press releases and other online publications Monday 10/21/2002 News2Me In this issue: Pursuing Passions and Perfection News2Me In this issue, we announce our new alliance with Sun Microsystems, our smooth move, and BigSender gets even more new features! BigSender 3 Released: More List-Management Features Built In The most complete online list-management and email/web publishing system available gets a one-click automated bounce manager and other built-in conveniences! News2Me: How To Publish Without Spamming BigSender is a powerful yet easy-to-use publishing system ñ but like any tool, it can be used incorrectly. Follow these guidelines to get optimal results with BigSender... E-News Gallery Goes Live Where publishers of electronic newsletters & e-zines can showcase their publications. AdminPro Is Updated No longer requires Perl to execute! Then The Rope Went Slack Rather than dazzled and empowererd, has all this techno-speak ever left you feeling dazed and confused? Marketing Secrets Revealed: When Customer Loyalty Isn't Master Minds: Becoming a Software Guru Are you an entry-level veteran or an inquisitive innovator? What Is A Web App? Bill Gates emphasizes the web browser as the "central application of computing." BigSender Backgrounder Microsoft Discontinues ListBot Out: free services. In: fee services. Official Premiere: News2Me What's Happened to AdminFTP and TestMy.CGI? AdminPro 2.5: More Power, More Control Debug CGI & Manage Files from a Web Browser?

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