2.0.9 Upgrade – comment notifications have default hosting email address

  • DianeV

    (@dianev)


    19 years, 3 months ago

    I recently upgraded a 1.5.3 blog to WP 2.0.9. It went smoothly, and worked with the custom theme he’d been using.

    However, comment notification emails now bear the web hosting account’s default email address as the “from” address instead of the commenter’s email address (which is how it worked prior to the upgrade).

    One thing I note is that, although he vaguely remembers using the default hosting email address earlier, there is no longer a user called “admin” — and the hosting email address is not in the database.

    But that does not explain why the commenter’s email address has been replaced by what *might* have been the admin address in comment notifications.

    By the way, this is on a Bluehost web hosting account.

    We’ve tried replacing a few files, but no joy. Does anyone have any words of wisdom for this?

    This appears to be a WP 2.0.9 problem
    I’ve tested our other 2.0.9 upgrades and they all exhibit the same behavior: comment notifications have some sort of default address (like wordpress@site.com, even if it doesn’t exist) in the “from” field, while the commenter’s email address is in the body of the email, along with other data (IP address, URL and comment). Surely this is an ease-of-use a problem if people want to send a reply to the commenter?

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • jrawle

    (@jrawle)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I think this is deliberate, for security / anti-spam reasons. Some hosts won’t allow PHP scripts to send e-mail with different headers such as From: address. Also, some mail servers will reject or delay mail if the address doesn’t match the domain of the server.

    If you want to reply, you can paste the address into the To: field (or, in most e-mail readers, the address will be a link you can click to reply).

    Thread Starter DianeV

    (@dianev)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    Thanks.

    That may be so, and I could see that.

    But, in such a case, wouldn’t it be more logical and convenient to have the commenter’s email address in the “reply-to” field?

    (And when did this change occur?)

    jrawle

    (@jrawle)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I think the issue here is that such headers are added in the additional_headers parameter. If a spammer entered the address as
    spammer@spam.com\r\nBcc: user@somewhere.com
    it could cause the message to be copied to the second address.

    Of course, scripts can check for this, and WordPress probably does, but hosts are worried about badly written scripts, so may not allow headers to be set.

    I’ve been using WordPress since 2.0, and it’s always behaved as it does now, so I’m guessing the change was between 1.5.x and 2.0. It should be fairly easy to write a plugin or hack to add Reply-to or change the From header if you know your host supports this – there may be one in existance already.

    mountainguy

    (@mountainguy)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I’m the person who Diane did the upgrade for, and it’s working well other than this one glitch. Prior to the upgrade my comment notification emails arrived with the commenter’s return address in the “from” field in Outlook. Now they don’t. I doubt my server host changed this at the exact same time as the upgrade… So the question is still, what’s different about 2.09 that would cause this? It’s a drag. I send a lot of private email replys to my commenters.

    Thread Starter DianeV

    (@dianev)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    Well, mountainguy, maybe now’s the time to post a request (in a new thread) for a plugin …

    There are plugins available, but I didn’t see anything that addresses this:
    http://wp-plugins.net/
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins

    I did find some email plugins at WeblogsToolCollection:
    http://weblogtoolscollection.com/search-beta.php?q=email

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I recently upgraded a 1.5.3 blog to WP 2.0.9.
    …
    However, comment notification emails now bear the web hosting account’s default email address as the “from” address instead of the commenter’s email address (which is how it worked prior to the upgrade).

    Yes. This changed way back in 2.0.0 or 2.0.1, I believe. There are legitimate reasons for the change, actually. It’s not a function of your host changing things, 2.0 just works differently than 1.5 did.

    While I don’t know offhand what 2.0.9 does, 2.1.2 *does* insert the commenter’s email address as a Reply-To: header. So reply should work fine. The email address is also included in the message itself.

    jrawle

    (@jrawle)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I doubt my server host changed this at the exact same time as the upgrade… So the question is still, what’s different about 2.09 that would cause this?

    No-one’s suggesting your host changed anything. WordPress changed because of possible security issues.

    The point about hosts was that some don’t permit scripts that add extra headers to e-mail. Yours probably doesn’t have a problem with it, but WordPress has to work on any host.

    Thread Starter DianeV

    (@dianev)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    Sorry; I did (finally) understand that the host did not change anything, and that it was the way 2.0x versions of WordPress does it.

    And, jrawle, you’re right — I’m sure it’s far more convenient if a script works fine on any host. Just wish w.0.9 inserted the commenter’s Reply-To address for *all* comment notification emails.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    19 years, 3 months ago

    I took a look at 2.0.9’s source code. It does insert a Reply-To: header for comment notification mails, if it gets an email address from the comment author.

    Thread Starter DianeV

    (@dianev)

    19 years, 3 months ago

    Thanks, Otto. Actually, my experience is that it inserts a Reply-To for people whose comments have been approved previously, but not for new commenters.

    At least, that’s my experience.

    mdsmds

    (@mdsmds)

    18 years, 7 months ago

    Can I somehow change the e-mail address in use? It’s kind of stupid that I enter an e-mail address in the WordPress control panel just to see that WordPress uses the server’s default mail address!

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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