I'm a little confused about one aspect of this module: in the read me, it refers to putting all the recipients' addresses in the BCC field, making it sound like the module just sends out a single e-mail message, which is BCC'ed to as many users as your site has. But some of the issues posted here sound more like it sends out multiple messages -- like the concerns expressed about choking the server if you're mailing a large number of users, and some of the references to customization using the token module.

Which is it? Does it send a separate message to each user, or one big message to all of them? If the latter, I'd be seriously worried about deliverability, as there are few more reliable ways of triggering any spam filter the message encounters than packing a ton of addresses into the BCC field -- that's how most spam is sent, so even a legitimate message using that technique is likely to be blocked by most spam filters.

Also, does the module, once installed, have any sort of settings page? I looked, after installing it, but couldn't find one, though it might be just because it's late at night and I'm tired. :-) In particularly, I'm really hoping it will allow me to customize the message that appears by the opt-out box, because the default message would make it illegal to use in Canada. (The reference to admins being able to remove the ability to opt out after users have signed up -- you can't legally do that here. You have to tell someone when they give you any form of personal information what you are and aren't going to do with it, and you cannot change those terms after the fact.)

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oadaeh’s picture

Does it send a separate message to each user, or one big message to all of them?

The Mass Contact module is setup to deliver to all recipients in one To: field or one BCC: field. However, it does give the option of splitting them up into chunks, and you can define how big those chunks are. If you were reading through the issue queue and found conflicting information, that is because I created a temporary workaround for one particular situation: users of both Mass Contact and SMTP Authentication Support. If you had read further, you would have seen that the workaround was recently removed due to matthewc finding a bug in and creating a patch for the SMTP Auth. module.

Also, does the module, once installed, have any sort of settings page?

It's in Administer -> Site building -> Mass Contact form or /admin/build/mass_contact. I admit it's not intuitive, but this module was modeled after the Contact module, and that which is where it's settings are.

I'm really hoping it will allow me to customize the message that appears by the opt-out box, because the default message would make it illegal to use in Canada. (The reference to admins being able to remove the ability to opt out after users have signed up -- you can't legally do that here. You have to tell someone when they give you any form of personal information what you are and aren't going to do with it, and you cannot change those terms after the fact.)

There is not currently an option for that, but it would not be a difficult thing to add.

spidersilk’s picture

The Mass Contact module is setup to deliver to all recipients in one To: field or one BCC: field. However, it does give the option of splitting them up into chunks, and you can define how big those chunks are.

Ah, I see. So I guess it would be a case of finding out how many BCC recipients it takes to trigger most spam filters and keeping the chunks under that in size... These days, the vast majority of ISPs and web hosts have some kind of spam filters in place before a message even gets to the recipient and has to make it through whatever kind of filters they have, so a message with a large number of BCC recipients isn't likely to get very far.

Though I suppose if you set it to use To instead of BCC and then set the chunk size to one, you'd get individual e-mails to each recipient, the way most mailing lists work? But probably also swamp the server...

It's in Administer -> Site building -> Mass Contact form or /admin/build/mass_contact.

Site Building! The one area of the admin I did not look in. :-) Thanks.

Always seemed weird to me that the contact form went under there -- I would have put it in Settings, but maybe that's just me.

There is not currently an option for that, but it would not be a difficult thing to add.

Maybe I should submit that separately under feature requests? And for the time being I suppose I could just edit the text in the module file itself.

oadaeh’s picture

Status: Active » Closed (fixed)