During the couple of months that I build the site on his yahoo servers everything seemed normal. Right before I was ready to make the live switch, yahoo business services merged with an oversees company called alibaba. I started to notice that I would get an error message pretty frequently, but the client wanted to go ahead and go live with the site. For about a year i would get an error about 50% of the time when I tried to go to the site. I spent many dozens of hours trying to resolve the issue. I checked every single setting I could find, googled everything I could think of, spent probably 8-10 hours on with yahoo "support" (at least half of which was waiting for them to connect me to a live agent). I re-downloaded CMSB and reinstalled everything from scratch and had the same issues as before.

I transferred the entire site to my own hosting and was instantly problem free. It's been 2 or 3 years since then so I don't remember more details than that... but I spent upwards of 30+ hours and could not get yahoo business hosting to work with cmbs.

As a side note... their "support" was literally terrible. I would spent 45-60 minutes waiting to connect, then get asked questions like "have you tried using a different computer?" or "try rebooting your internet service".

I suffered this same fate and posted about it here...

https://www.interactivetools.com/forum/forum-posts.php?page=1&Need-Help-ASAP-High-website-traffic-error-message-80314

I tried for many many hours to working on every possible solution I could conceive of. Ultimately what solved the problem was moving to a new hosting company. My client had insisted that I use his existing host (yahoo).  As soon as I transferred the site to my own hosting company the problem was solved.

Not sure if that's the same experience for you, but hope that's helpful.  Good luck man.

One hurdle that I can't figure out to get my email sending switched over to smtp. My web host has an hourly and daily smtp quota, as I'm sure all of them do.

I see a reference to "background send" in  outgoing mail (under email settings in CMSB), but I can't see how to configure it.

I thought perhaps this could be accomplished with the cron.php that you guys conveniently provided and the "background tasks" menu option, but I didn't see a way to implement delayed or background email sending.

While searching the forums, the only references I found to "background send" where in the newsletter plugin. Do I need to purchase the newsletter plugin to enable this feature? Or do I need to migrate my outgoing emails to a paid smtp service?

I also saw old threads that referenced mandrill (by mailchimp), but it no longer offers a free option.

I did find one instance of mail() being used in a plugin that I have called emailOnApproved. I don't see the plugin on the official Add-On's page so I think it's a small one that has been passed around the forums a bit.  I am actually using 3 instances of this plugin (renamed). 

So 2 questions...

1. even though the function being called is sendMessage, it is currently still using the built-in php mail() protocol because that's what I have selected in the email settings.  Have other people experienced a similar issue with using that protocol? Is switching to smtp generally a better choice anyways? Or does something just seem screwy with my particular web/email host?

2. Would I be safe in the emailOnApproved plugin to just change the line that says

mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

to simply

sendMessage($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

or are the parameters different?

One question.

I was under the impression that I would need to find all the instances where the php mail() function was used and somehow change it within the code to mail using smtp instead...

but it seems from your suggestion that I don't need to change anything in the actual cmsb or plugins files, and that I only need to change the "How to Send Mail" selection in the Admin>Email Settings.

Am I reading that right?  I should only change the settings but don't have to actually change the mail() function within the code itself? 

Could I just modify the sending code to utilize swiftmailer instead of the built in php mail() function? 

If that's possible, it seems like that would have already been done in the forum plugin.  Am I missing something?

The bottom line is that he suggested I stop using the built in php mail() function and switch to using smtp for sending email from web forms and forum. It would involve installing PHPMailer or something similar.

Before I dive into that, does that seem like a reasonable solution?

---------------------------- Chat with Dreamhost ----------------------------------------------

(02:43:58)Ryan T: It's not something we can directly fix on our end.

(02:44:39)Greg: Is it the entirety of dreamhost mail servers have been placed on a block list?

02:46:31)Ryan T: They do get placed on blocklists from time to time, due to the servers being shared, and some customers abusing/misusing the services.

02:47:02)Greg: Do I need to move my email hosting or my entire website to a different host? It's been 3 months... I can't possibly continue with my members emails getting rejected so frequently

(02:47:44)Greg: Do you have any kind of recommendation?

(02:49:35)Ryan T: A dedicated mail host/option (Rather than a shared one) would be a better fit if you depend on your email service for user/business communication.

(02:50:09)Ryan T: As far as options? First of all, switching the site/script to use SMTP authentication vs direct mailing via PHP.

(02:50:35)Ryan T: SMTP/Mail provider wise, you can use just about anyone.

(02:51:05)Ryan T: We have some integration with Google Apps/Google Suite, but any custom MX records could work.

(02:52:24)Greg: So dreamhost does not have smtp authentication, but I could use googles?

(02:52:36)Ryan T: We do, actually.

(02:53:23)Ryan T: You can use our mail service. It's also a shared service, but on different servers than hosting. You said you were mailing directly from the servers, in this case.

02:54:12)Greg: well, I'm using the php mail() function... not sure if that is directly from the servers or the mail service

(02:55:33)Ryan T: php mail() is sent directly from the server, 'northumberland' in your case As far as Google goes, we have some options to set them up in the panel, but you can use anyone's mail servers if you have it set up.

(02:55:59)Greg: the address that is sending from is webmaster@gwche.org which is a fully configured email address hosted with dreamhost

(02:58:08)Ryan T: It's sending from php on the server, and spoofing a 'From' address to one fully hosted here, most likely:https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215507058-PHP-mail-overview

(02:58:20)Ryan T: You'd need to use PEAR for SMTP: https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/216140597-How-do-I-send-PHP-mail-via-SMTP-

(03:00:19)Greg: I followed a link on that page that discusses PEAR... but also PHPMailer. I guess either of these 2 will allow sending email using smtp from the web form?

(03:01:36)Ryan T: Ah, forgot about that one. Both should work.

(03:02:31)Greg: looking at the phpmailer page on the dreamhost site, it has a grid discussing sending limits...

(03:02:48)Ryan T: That'd be the SMTP quota.

(03:03:04)Greg: could there be a sending limit that is causing my regular php mail() function to have problems?(03:03:37)Ryan T: php mailing has no limit, so they aren't related.

(03:04:12)Ryan T: Also, your errors would very clearly state that you've hit the SMTP limit. You're getting rejection messages from external servers, not our internal mail server.

(03:05:25)Greg: how confident are you that reconfiguring the code to use smtp instead of php mail() will allow all of the emails to get through?

(03:08:28)Ryan T: It may help, but it won't guarantee it. You may find that our mail servers are also being blocked by certain mail services for a similar reason. However, if that's the case, you have the option to switch your SMTP/Domain Mail provider to another service (let's say Google's, for the example?) You can then edit your script's authentication details to match the new Google address you made, and that should circumvent the server blocks entirely.

(03:09:58)Ryan T: Does that make sense? If it doesn't work on our servers, at least you have a straightforward next step for getting your email out.

(03:10:11)Greg: looking closer at that smtp quota grid, one of the lines says FTP & Shell users on shared servers. Sending using PHP/CGI scripts. 200 40 40MB (encoded)

(03:10:31)Greg: Is that still only being applied to smtp?

(03:11:42)Ryan T: That should still only apply to SMTP PHP/CGI scripts.

(03:12:44)Greg: so it looks like I need to pick either PEARL or PHPMailer, install, then edit the mail code to do smtp outgoing mail instead of the php function, correct?

(03:14:06)Ryan T: That would be my suggestion, yes.

The website gwche.org is an organization of homeschool families in a local area.  Families join the organization through the website.  I am using the website membership plugin with CMSB to accomplish this. 

Aside from the nearly static information on the website, there are 2 basic features that are used...

1. A membership forum using the forums plugin.
2. The organization's board members can post events and announcements directly to the website (using CMSB). In addition to the new events and announcements posting to the website, an email with the new event or announcement is also sent out to the members.

Here's the issue I'm having...

There are several member's for whom the emails are getting rejected by their email service provider and bounced back to me as Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.  The emails getting rejected are from forums and event/announcements.

I have verified that the email are actually being sent and that is the recipient email provider that is rejecting them. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a single email provider... I have rejected emails that are hotmail, aol, microsoft, yahoo, and I think Gmail.  But I have other users with those same email services who DO get the email.

The bounceback "undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" messages include something like

------------------------

<email address>: delivery temporarily suspended: host
    mailin-04.mx.aol.com[64.12.91.196] refused to talk to me: 421 4.7.1 :
    (DYN:T1) https://postmaster.aol.com/error-codes#421dynt1

Final-Recipient: rfc822; lisapem@aol.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;lisapem@aol.com
Action: failed
Status: 4.7.1
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; delivery temporarily suspended: host
    mailin-04.mx.aol.com[64.12.91.196] refused to talk to me: 421 4.7.1 :
    (DYN:T1) https://postmaster.aol.com/error-codes#421dynt1

----------------------------------------

There are about 150 members, and about 8-10 who's emails get returned to me as undelivered.

I have tried working with my hosting company but they seem sluggish on this issue.

It feels like the emails are getting tagged as spam or something and not being allowed to pass through, but I have no idea how to address that.

HELP. PRETTY PLEASE.

I did just notice that the auto-generated emails say 

If you don't want to receive updates on this forum topic, please unsubscribe.

So what if I unsubscribe from the forum topic, but I'm still subscribed to the overall forum Category?  Does this link prevent me from getting email notices for replies to that specific topic even if I am subscribed to the entire Forum Category, or does the category subscription override the individual topics?

I'm digging deep for a little help here. I really have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I've found a route to make this change pretty easy.  But in order to test it, I'll have to set up a new site, install CMSB, membership plugin, forum plugin etc to have a testing playground (my site that I need it for is now active.) So before I go through all that, let me know if this approach sound decent (pretty please!)

Currently, the page creating a new topic (forum-topics-create.php) and the page generating a reply to a topic (forum-posts-reply.php) both use the same function to send the email notifications. It's called sforum_sendFollowersPostNotifications($post, $topic, $forum);  

That function exists on the page simpleForum.php, but within that function is a call to another function  foreach (sforum_db_getFollowerEmails($topic['num'], $forum['num']) as $followerEmail) . This function seems to be where the list of people following a specific topic are joined together with those follow the entire category to make a single array of email addresses for the notification.  The function code looks like

function sforum_db_getFollowerEmails($topicNum, $forumNum) {
  global $TABLE_PREFIX;
  $followersQuery   = mysql_escapef("SELECT tu.email
                                      FROM `{$TABLE_PREFIX}_frm_topic_follow` tf
                                      JOIN `{$TABLE_PREFIX}".accountsTable()."` tu
                                        ON tf.userNum = tu.num
                                      WHERE tf.topicNum = ?
                                      UNION
                                      SELECT fu.email
                                      FROM `{$TABLE_PREFIX}_frm_forum_follow` ff
                                      JOIN `{$TABLE_PREFIX}".accountsTable()."` fu
                                        ON ff.userNum = fu.num
                                      WHERE ff.forumNum = ? 
                                       ", $topicNum, $forumNum  );
  $followers = mysql_fetch($followersQuery);
  return array_pluck($followers, 'email');
}

My Plan is basically this...

1. Leave the sforum_db_getFollowerEmails function alone, but make another very similar function that does not combine the general category followers but instead it only includes the followers of the specific topic.  I would call it sforum_db_getReplyFollowerEmails.

2. Leave the sforum_sendFollowersPostNotifications function alone, but make another very similar function called sforum_sendReplyFollowersPostNotifications .  The only difference is that this function would call the new sforum_db_getReplyFollowerEmails from step 1.

3. On forum-posts-reply.php replace sforum_sendFollowersPostNotifications($post, $topic, $forum);
with sforum_sendReplyFollowersPostNotifications($post, $topic, $forum);

If that plan seems reasonable, I would just need help modifying the QUERY in the code block above. 

Suddenly today we can not reach admin.php to even attempt to login.

Warning: unlink(/cmsAdmin/data/settings.dat.php.597874aa4e70d8.52616479-temp.php): No such file or directory in /cmsAdmin/lib/common.php on line 235 file_put_contents_atomic: Error renaming over /cmsAdmin/data/settings.dat.php: (at common.php line 357 in function file_put_contents_atomic)

Here's the link http://www.bigironchl.com/cmsAdmin/admin.php

Any ideas where to begin?

I asked in another thread about a similar issue but it has not received any replies...

Basically I can't figure out how the "subscribe to category" feature works for simple forum.  Is it

If an account is subscribed to an entire category, do they...

A. get emails for all new threads within the category AND for all replies to threads in the category

OR

B. get emails ONLY when a new thread is created (but not the replies to an existing thread).

I assumed it was going to be option B, but based on my user feedback I think it is currently functioning as option A.  

How could I modify the line on  /forum/forum-posts-reply.php (the code that was missing) so that replies to a topic only send emails to people specifically subscribed to that topic, but not to people that are just generally subscribed to the entire category.

I am hoping to achieve option B above.

But it seems as if my users are getting an email for every new topic created AND for every reply (even though they are not subscribed to the specific thread).

It could be related to the problem I described in this other post but I don't think so. https://www.interactivetools.com/forum/forum-posts.php?forums-plugin-missing-line-of-code-I-think-81055

As you are setting up the membership plugin, you can choose for the membership database to be a separate data table than your CMSB users, or you can choose for them to be the same table.

If you want your users to be able to update their own listings, you would want the Membership and CMSB data tables to be THE SAME.

Then on the user-signup.php file you would include a line so that every person signing up has Author Access to your listings table.  They would then be able to login to the CMSB backend using the same username/password as the membership. They would only see the link to the Listings table, and even there they would only be able to see and edit their own listings.

Digging into the files, I found the following code on /forum/forum-posts-reply.php 

//Send thread followers emails letting them know the thread has been updated.
      sforum_sendFollowersPostNotifications($post, $topic, $forum);

Which is the code that was sending me emails properly when someone replied to a thread.

I looked for something similar in /forum/forum-topics-create.php that would generate an email when a NEW topic was created but I couldn't find it anywhere.  After looking at the function, it seemed to me that the same function is used to send both emails (new topics and replies). So I just copied the code into the forum-topics-create.php file and tested it.  It seemed to work fine!  

I just re-downloaded the simple forum plugin and checked it from a fresh download ... the code is missing from forum-topics-create.php

So my question is this...

Was I right to insert that code so that email will get sent when someone subscribes to a forum ... or is there a different code that does that and I am just not seeing it.  My fix seemed to work but I'm nervous it wasn't the right thing to do.  Is the sforum_sendFollowersPostNotifications functions intended to send both types of subscriber emails or is there a different function I should be using?

thanks.

I found myself trying to do the same thing.  What I realized is that both the greyHiddenRecords and and redSoldRecords plugins where altering the same Core Plugin Hook called listRow_trStyle

What it seems like to me is that with the updated plugin, you can now add additonal conditions such as 

$GLOBALS['greyRecordFieldNamesToOptions']['date'] = [
                                            'value'      => date("Y-m-d H:i:s"), // date today
                                            'comparator' => '<', // compare if this is a date in the past
                                            'tableName'  => 'sample_table', // grey-out the record only on this table/section list page
                                          ];

but there is not a separate text formatting for those conditions.  Basically any record meeting any of the conditions will change the listRow_trStyle to the same thing.

Looking at the file   /cmsb/lib/menus/default/list_functions.php you will see this at line 139

 $trStyle = applyFilters('listRow_trStyle', '', $tableName, $record);

and then this just a few lines down

print "<tr class='$trClass' style='$trStyle'>\n";
displayListColumns($listFields, $record, $options);
print "</tr>\n";

So it would appear that there is a single listRow_trSyle hook that is Global and both of your plugins were modifying it.  I suppose whichever plugin is processed 2nd wins.

Could it be as simple as allowing a user to mark his reply as private ... and then private replies are only visible to admins, original poster, and the replier?

Swiftmailer tries to create a temporary directory in the default /tmp folder... but for some reason that crashes.  Not sure if it's php 7, or apache, or what, but trying to make a directory in /tmp just fails.  I test this with a simple file i called testmail.php

<?php
mkdir('/tmp/test');
?>

To solve I did this

Step 1. Manually create a new location for swiftmailer to write it's temporary files and make sure it has Write permissions.  I created a folder called swiftTemp in my root directory.

Step 2.  In the file  /cmsb/3rdParty/Swiftmailer5/preferences.php  change this 

if (@is_writable($tmpDir = sys_get_temp_dir())) {
    $preferences->setTempDir($tmpDir)->setCacheType('disk');

to this

if (@is_writable($tmpDir = 'swiftTemp')) {
    $preferences->setTempDir($tmpDir)->setCacheType('disk');

This tells the swiftmailer plugin to use your new folder instead of the default temp folder.

The Swift_Transport_MailTransport class is deprecated since version 5.4.5 and will be removed in 6.0. Use the Sendmail or SMTP transport instead.
/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/3rdParty/SwiftMailer5/classes/Swift/Transport/MailTransport.php (line 45)

mkdir(): Too many links
/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/3rdParty/SwiftMailer5/classes/Swift/KeyCache/DiskKeyCache.php (line 273)

 Failed to create cache directory /tmp/061f2669b80ae4816e8f0557524aadad (total iterations: 1, send time: 0.16s, emails sent: 0, total emails sent: 0, total script time: 1.59s)
/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/lib/common.php (line 1466)

require_once(/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/3rdParty/SwiftMailer5/swift_required.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory
/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/lib/common.php (line 1369)

I'm going to spend some time to sort through them and see what I can figure out, but I thought it was worth copy/pasting real quick to update you on the status.

Thanks for looking into this.

I checked the file called "version" in in the new swiftmailer folder and the _old... both of them say 5.4.1

I am using CMS Builder v3.10 (Build 2139)

PHP v7.0.14

As a side not, I created my own plugin to send an email to the website members when a new event is posted (a new record is created in the "events" table). I started with EmailOnApproved and modified it.  These emails seem to be working fine.  The ones not working are in the forums, and when new members create an account.

Today I installed the simple forum plugin.  While testing, I realized that subscription emails were not being sent.  I test the new member signup emails and they have stopped working also.

I ran a testmail.php file to verify that server email is still working fine.

Each time I create a new user now, I get 2 errors on the developer log

E_USER_NOTICE: Failed to create cache directory /tmp/524f7090b2a216dc49db63c7038ef49c (total iterations: 1, send time: 0.01s, emails sent: 0, total emails sent: 0, total script time: 0.07s)

/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/lib/common.php (line 1466)

and

E_WARNING: mkdir(): Too many links
/home/gwche/gwche.org/cmsb/3rdParty/SwiftMailer5/classes/Swift/KeyCache/DiskKeyCache.php (line 273)
http://www.gwche.dreamhosters.com/user-signup.php

Note that the gwche.org is the site I'm building, but gwche.dreamhosters.com is a mirror site created in my hosting account while I am waiting to transfer the gwche.org domain name.  This has not been an issue at all but I suppose it could be part of the problem.

The yahoo hosting support was virtually useless.  They suggested it could be a corrupted database file, and I think they ran some kind of database repair tool (several weeks ago) that was no help.

A couple of questions...

1. Would a "corrupted database file" even make sense as a possible issue?  

2. If so, is there any way that I could copy or remake the data file and then somehow migrate all the info to it?  

My client really does not want to move to a new web hosting company.  He used to use the yahoo "build your own" site feature... and when he logs back into that program he doesn't have any problems... so he is convinced that it's not a yahoo issue but it's a cmsb issue.  I am fairly certain that I could spend 2 hours setting up a new hosting account and migrating everything to it, but he's stuck on trying to make it work on his yahoo hosting.  

I suppose now that I can show direct problems with connect to the mysql I should call them again and give it one more shot.