WordPress sendmail not working under certain circumstances

  • cagsmith

    (@cagsmith)


    12 years, 9 months ago

    Greetings everyone,

    I recently migrated my wordpress site and DB to a new host. Previously I was on a shared Linux host, and am now on a shared Windows host. I had read various stories about WP not playing nice under Windows, but despite a couple of teething problems, everything went pretty smoothly… until today. I published a new post and wondered why I was not getting any comments. I checked out my site and noticed that I had in fact received comments, but had received no email notification of them.

    I wanted to know if it was sending emails at all, ever, so I registered a new user and sure enough, I received an email saying that “a new user has registered”.

    I’ve checked php_info and sendmail is enabled, although sender path is blank.

    Here’s what works:
    – password resets and user registration notifications (seemingly mail events triggered by wordpress admin)
    – messages sent by a plugin “Fast, Secure Contact Form”, although it *seems* that it uses it’s own method of sending mail, not anything related to sendmail directly.

    Here’s what doesn’t work:
    – notifications to me and notifications to visitors, triggered by a plugin “Comment Notifier” (seemingly mail events triggered through posts).

    What I’ve tried:
    – Downloaded multiple plugins which attempt to force WP to send notifications via SMTP and not through PHP sendmail. I can send a test mail once these plugins are configured, but they still won’t send comment notifications etc (and sending via SMTP seems really slow!)

    – Checked around and it seems it’s possible to correct this by hacking php.ini a bit, but as it’s a shared hosting environment, the php.ini is located in C:\Windows\ – A location I don’t have access to.

    And so:
    So, I was wondering – has anyone ever heard of this? It seems like maybe a permission issue somewhere, since SOME mails are sent, but not all (although ideally I’d like a bit more control over even the new user notifications, because at the moment they’re all coming from “Windows@Hostgator.com” – I’d much rather they come from my site’s email address.

    Hope you can help, and thanks for your time!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • chief-uk

    (@chief-uk)

    12 years, 6 months ago

    I have the same problem, and think I know the solution… you need an extra parameter of -f (from) and a valid email address on your host. Just going to attack the code, will let you know what I find.

    chief-uk

    (@chief-uk)

    12 years, 6 months ago

    Found it…

    in wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php
    line 84 

    /**
   * Sets the From email address for the message.
   * @var string
   */
  public $From = 'root@localhost';

    change root@localhost to an email address on your site, e.g. noreply@example.com

    This fixed it for me, plus you have a few other fixed variables in the next few sections you may also want to change.

    Thread Starter cagsmith

    (@cagsmith)

    12 years, 6 months ago

    Thanks a lot – looks hopeful. I’ll have a peek tonight 🙂

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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