Simplenews + Mime Mail + SMTP = occasional blank email

Question

I have a client site that uses the Simplenews module with the Mime Mail and SMTP Authentication modules. The subscriber list has a little over 300 email addresses, and when newsletters go out the cron sends out batches of 100 messages per hour. Things usually go off without a hitch, but with the last newsletter one of the batches sent contained blank messages. I have been unable to reproduce the problem. Someone else reported the same problem here:

https://www.drupal.org/node/2378147

. . . but has of yet there has been no response, and I'm not convinced the problem lies with the Simplenews module itself. Has anyone else seen anything like this problem?

Answer 1

First step. Have you combed your logs in Drupal for errors? And have your also looked at your web server PHP error logs?

With this random problem you are having I would expect to see something going on in the logs.

I have never used the Simplenews module or reviewed it's code so I cannot say how well the authors of the module addressed error handling the module.

Clearly you have a problem and it's been reported by other people. If you find no error in the logs then I would say that potentially the module does not have enough error handling written into it to diagnose the problem.

For what it's worth (purely for your own information), I will say that attempting to do an email newsletter from a a web server is not the preferred method. An email service provider should be used for that functionality if you have any concern for deliver-ability of your newsletter.

Answer 2

@JOakland just switch cron to be called only from special URL, not at any URL call I killed 5 days investigating "empty emails" trouble - crap begins observed in theme_render_template($template_file, $variables) at include point