still no email notifications (1 Viewer)

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Parker,
I was wondering if you could try putting something, anything, in the "Reply-To" field of the email notifications again? I've received notificatoins for Private Messages, but I'm still not receiving any for my regularly subscribed threads. As I mentioned in my earlier thread about no notifcations (which I can't find now??), I did some testing from different email accounts and it looks like my email service won't accept emails with missing or incorrectly formed Reply-To's (i.e.; missing the "@" sign, etc).
I believe a common way to "spam block" an address, which would be basically what you need, would be to add a ".invalid" to the end of a validly formatted address. For example, you could try something like:
[email protected]
Thanks for considering this. HTF is just too big to remember every thread I'm interested in all the time. :frowning:

 

[Parker Clack]

Patrick:

If I put the original sender's email address in there then members where complaining that they didn't want their email address included in the email that was sent out. If I go back to the way it was orginally it was sending out the forum email address as the sender and people were sending me replies.

So several people asked that I put nothing in there. So take care of those issues that is why it is blank. If I put a bogus email address in the From: box people are going to complain that their email is getting returned to them.

I will try your suggestion and see what happens.

Parker

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Parker,
Thanks. My fingers are crossed in hopes that I'll soon be seeing updated thread notifications.

 

[Parker Clack]

Me too. I hope your older notifications start to work.

Parker

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

still no emails. :frowning:
Sorry for asking you to make a change that didn't accomplish anything, Parker. But thanks for trying. I guess I'll just have to try and remember what threads I've been reading & responding too manually. {sigh}

 

[Parker Clack]

Patrick:

That is so weird. Maybe it won't work for past posts, since I made the change, but should for recent threads that you are following.

Parker

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Nope. Nothing. Not on new threads, not on new subscriptions. Not on old threads and not on old subscriptions. Very annoying. I hadn't realized just how dependant I had become on those emails.
I wonder if it could be because of my ".info" address? Could VBB have a problem with the new HLQ's? Altho ... I have received notices of two private messages, so ... :frowning:
ARGH!! (sorry, I just had let that out).

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

I've changed my email address to see if it lets the notifications start again ...

 

[Parker Clack]

Patrick:

Like I said I get the notices just fine so it has to be something on your end. Hopefully the change in your email address will resolve the situation.

Parker

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Parker,
That's it. Email notifiations to my ISP address work. Email notifications to my public, and prefered, .INFO email address don't show up. So now the question is ... is my .INFO host bouncing the messages HTF is sending me (perhaps due to the lack of a REPLY-TO address?), or is HTF's software not successfully sending emails to my .INFO address?
Hmmm ... I want to test the REPLY-TO theory, but my email software won't let me create an account without a REPLY-TO entry!

 

[Parker Clack]

Well, they aren't getting bounced because I would get them sent to me instead as undeliverable.

Parker

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

I've just submitted a tech support question to my host asking whether they might be forwarding emails without a REPLY-TO header to /dev/null. Because that header is the one difference I can figure out between what HTF is sending me and everything else I *do* receive. :frowning:

 

[Jason Price]

I'm still not getting email notifications, either. :frowning:
I'll try changing my email addy, too, just to see if it works. I miss having that feature, but changing it full time isn't really an option, as I only regularly check one email addy... :frowning:
Parker,
What about just putting '[email protected]' or something like that? I see that you mention people complaining about their reply emails being bounced, but anyone replying to a thread-update message has other issues already. Or, you could set up a filter to simply discard messages sent to that address, so the sender would not receive an "undeliverable" error.

 

[Adam Tyner]

Could this be related to PHP's infamous 'Return-Path' problem? I had a similar issue with a PHP script I wrote for work...Return-Path can't be set directly with the mail() function (you can specify it, but it won't do anything), and some mail hosts reject mail if it doesn't 'like' the way Return-Path looks. Mine was defaulting to something like www@localhost and was rejected by a small percentage of recipients. We weren't getting the bounced mail either...the only way I could tell if it didn't work was to run mailq.

 

[Patrick R. Sklenar]

Adam,

I wonder if that might not be it. Since I switched my HTF email to my ISP account (literally the only thing I use that account for now), I'm getting notifications. However, when it's set to my primary email account (via my web hosting provider), I never see the notifications. I *have* noticed that my regular email provider is far more agressive in bouncing spam and invalid emails ...

Hmmmm .... Parker? You're thoughts?

 

[Parker Clack]

Adam:

I am not sure. The script uses the mail() for sending out email but the return path is supposed to be noreply @htf.com.invalid. If your ISP is rejecting this return path then that may be the problem. The only reason I use that is because I was told that leaving it blank was causing problems and others did not want their email listed as the return address. I do not use the default for hometheaterforum.com as that is me and I don't want to get all those return emails in reply.

Also, I am not sure if you are aware that I have set it up in the User Control Panel > Edit Options that you have to enable the "Receive an Email each time someone replies to your subscribed threads?" to have an email sent to you each time a person replies to a thread that you are following or disabled to just have one email sent to you after which you have to come back to the thread to continue to get additional emails.

As far as not getting any email notifications at all I am sure that the issue is with you ISP blocking the return email address that I use that was requested to be used as there again a lot of ISP's will not accepted an email with nothing used in the return email information.

Parker

 

[Jason Price]

Well, I confirmed that it is an issue with my web hosting provider. I changed my email addres to my work address, and I suddenly started getting email notifications again. Guess I'll have to take it up with my web host...

 

[Parker Clack]

Jason:

Ask them what the problem is on their end. It might help in taking care of the problem with other ISPs.

Parker

 

[Parker Clack]

I have changed the reply address used to see if that will help.

Parker

 

[Jason Price]

I haven't gotten any info back from my web host yet - I'll let you know when/if I do. I've gone ahead and changed my email back to my web host email in response to your changing the 'from' address. Now, I just need someone to reply to one of my subscriptions...