Membership emails no longer sending
7 posts by 4 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: May 23, 2015 (RSS)
By celuch - April 24, 2015
I'm using the website membership for a client to collect application data, and it has worked perfectly for the past months. Now, it appears to send neither a confirmation message or a notification message. Where do I start to troubleshoot this?
By ross - April 24, 2015
Hi celuch
Thanks for posting. The first thing I want to do is confirm that you are saying no emails seem to get sent and no emails show up in the Outgoing Mail section. It sounds like that's what you are saying but I want to confirm.
With that being the case, my first thought is to setup as simple a test as possible that eliminates CMS Builder from the equation. This will help us narrow down whether the issue is server related or CMS Builder related. Here's a very basic snippet of code that should send a simple test email:
<?php
$to = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>
Create a file called testMail.php with this code in it (you'll want to put your own email addresses in there) and upload to your server. After running it, see if the email showed up in your inbox. If it does, this means the issue may be CMS Builder related. If it doesn't, it will likely mean the issue is server related.
TIP: use different email addresses for "to" and "from". Usually the "from" address works best if uses the domain you are running the test script on. For example, if you are working on "www.mysite.com", you could have the "to" set as any of your own email addresses and then the "from" would be something like "webmaster@mysite.com". You'll want to make sure the "from" email is a valid address.
Does that all make sense? Report back with what you find after running the test. Thanks!
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com
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By celuch - April 24, 2015
Yes, the test messages came through. I tried 3 email addresses on different systems and all worked.
Before I suspect CMSB is the problem, though, note that we've had several CMSB unrelated forms stop sending to some addresses lately.
Any other ideas?
By ross - April 24, 2015
Hi celuch
Great! Thanks for getting back to me! With the test script, are you sending to the same address that you are not able to via CMS Builder? Basically, I want to confirm the test is doing the same thing that CMS Builder is trying. Your note about some addresses not working anymore does key in for me as I have seen some servers just not setup to send messages to specific domains.
Does that make sense? Let me know :).
Thanks!
Cheers,
Ross Fairbairn - Consulting
consulting@interactivetools.com
Hire me! Save time by getting our experts to help with your project.
Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you
need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with
Priority Consulting: http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/
By celuch - April 24, 2015
It does sound like the server, as when I tried a new message (after your response) to the client, they did not get it.
It has been so long since I set this up I don't remember... where do you set the confirmation address for a form signup for the membership plugin? I can't seem to locate it to try to send to me to confirm that it is sending.
By Dave - April 27, 2015
Hi Celuch,
Can you confirm that the "From" address on the emails is an email the server is allowed to send from? (eg: all forms on our server need to have a from: *@interactivetools.com). If you set the "From" to the clients email and not yours some email servers will block it because they'll know you're not allowed to send emails on behalf of the client.
If that's it and you want to still be able to reply to client emails directly just set a From as a server email and a "reply-to" with the clients email.
Let me know if that resolve it for you. Thanks!
interactivetools.com
By kitsguru - May 23, 2015
You might also want to check that the server is not listed in any of the spam databses.
If it is, you might want to consider using mandrill, its a free service, a companion to mailchimp for handling transactional email.