Sending a mass email - basic/idiotic question

I've finally managed to get just about everything working on this rascal but I'm confused with the mass email function (the forum is great, but I'm still wondering where - or if - any serious documentation exists for this thing).  If I add a message - which I've tried - where in the hell is the "send" button...?  Is it called something else?  Since I only have two members, one of whom is myself, I am guessing that the "add to queue" button isn't the send function; if it is, then mine's broken.  I ticked both of the deals at the bottom (send to members and subscribers - was leaving nothing to chance) and received nothing.  Am I doing something knuckleheaded, as usual?

Is it "emtpy queue"...? My Kingdom for a send button....

I've searched the forum and Googled like crazy - this is as close as I've come for "how to send mass email in Dolphin":

Mass stranding leaves dolphins dying in Florida - life - 04 March ... (this didn't help - but my condolences to the dolphins)

In general, the Mass email will send out via the Cron Job.

It should say that there are mails in the que and not be blank.  It will have a number of emails from there remaining to be sent.

You may want to check your cron job settings to see that they look something like this:

0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/yourname/public_html/periodic/cmd.php
*/10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/yourname/public_html/periodic/notifies.php
* */1 * * * /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/yourname/public_html/periodic/cupid.php

Thanks a lot - I'll check the cron job deal (have to find it, first).

I dunno... I copied and pasted these directives into my cron tasks (editing the paths, of course) and they didn't work.  I've got the permissions on the php files set to 755 - is that correct?  This is on Slackware Linux (12.0).

Mine are chmod to 666.  Try that.

Also jus a little add on about your cron jobs. I had problems in the begging be cause my absolute root path was a little different from what is posted above. If you keep getting errors check with your host. I am with godaddy for now and their root patch is different depending on what type of hosting package you have.

Ugh!

Now I am getting an issue.  Geesh!  Alright so this is what my mass email looks like right now:

- Start email send -
Total queued emails: 49
Ready for send: 20
Processed emails: 0
Processed emails with errors: 0

The cron job is set to the following:

*/10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/mysite/public_html/periodic/notifies.php

Yet, the emails are not being sent out....

The admin panel shows the following:

Okay - this is weird.   I got two emails that were of the report nature (no "mass" email to a dummy, member account and I have a couple in the mass email queue - they're still sitting there).  In other words, the ones I got were to my admin account and said something about "database cleaning" and a "temporary files check" - I'm sure you've all seen these.  And the odd part is that I got two of them, about 8 minutes apart, and have not got another.  I did jerk around with my file permissions....3 times - argh.  This part of this whole deal is really cryptic...  How often, based upon the code and the crontab - should a mass email go out...every 10 minutes?

This is a great package but there's got to be a more elegant (simpler) way to set this up for the average Joe.... A mass email would be something that you'd compose and want to send at a given time (like with a "send" button).

And I'd used RedHat early on and, now, Slackware for the last 6 years - I've never had any "MAILTO" directive in my crontab (which I just saw in the "detailed installation instructions" deal).  Am I supposed to have a line like that in my crontab to make this work?

By the way, all of the other mail functions work (when someone signs up, etc.).

Ugh