Contact Form 7 and WP-mail-SMTP plugin on Godaddy

Resolved strongvon
(@strongvon)

13 years, 2 months ago

I have a shared web hosting account on a Windows Server at Godaddy, and use relay-hosting.secureserver.net with no authentication on port 25. This was the only configuration that I found to work on Godaddy because I use a an email account that is hosted on Godaddy. The FROM email configured on both WP-mail-SMTP and CF7 must be identical, and there can be no other SMTP mail configuration plug-in installed. This configuration worked fine for about a year, but then suddenly after upgrading from CF7 2.4.1 to CF7 2.4.3, everything stopped working, even though the test tool on WP-mail-SMTP still worked.

I tore my hair out trying to figure it out. I still have no explanation, and Godaddy support pretty much told me I was on my own because WordPress is not their product.

So after scouring countless forums, I found a link to a very old version of CF7 (1.9.5), so I decided to uninstall CF7 2.4.3 and install CF7 1.9.5. That didn’t appear to work, so I re-installed CF7 2.4.3 and to my pleasant surprise, CF7 worked again. I thought at first it was the act of uninstalling CF7 2.4.3 and reinstalling CF7 2.4.3 that did the trick, but after experimentation I found that it was actually the installation of CF7 1.9.5 prior to the re-installation of CF7 2.4.3 that did the trick. It made no sense, but I think there’s something about installing 1.9.5 that configured something on my WordPress installation that makes WP-mail-SMTP work again. Here is the link to CF7 1.9.5: http://www.idiotproofblogging.com/reports/contact-form-7.zip

Hopefully that will help some of you who had it working, then suddenly stopped for no reason after the upgrade. For me, just uninstalling and re-installing CF7 2.4.3 wasn’t good enough. I had to install and uninstall CF7 1.9.5 first. Weird, but works for me.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

dmitcha
(@dmitcha)

13 years, 2 months ago

While the above didn’t work for me, it did give me hope. I finally found the two-step process that worked for me here (for Go Daddy – additional email provider tips are in the comments):

1) Configuring WP-Mail-SMTP: http://angstrey.com/index.php/2009/04/22/how-to-send-e-mail-with-wordpress-from-godaddy-windows-hosting/
2) Configuring Contact Form 7: http://angstrey.com/index.php/2009/07/20/contact-form-7s-failed-to-send-your-message-error/

IMPORTANT: You will need to use an SMTP plug in for Contact Form 7; I went with WP-Mail-SMTP, as the blogger did. Followed it to the letter and finally got contact form to work.

In the meantime, I also installed the contact form 7 db plugin, which captures all submissions to the db and has a data interface to view them, so you won’t miss out on any submissions while you try to get contact form to work.

Callum Macdonald
(@chmac)

13 years, 2 months ago

Awesome, thanks for posting this guys. I’m the plugin author and it’s great to see people posting solutions. 🙂

Love & joy – Callum.

jgrosso
(@jgrosso)

13 years, 2 months ago

I followed the settings in the two links from mitcha to a T and I still get the red box and error.

zfly9
(@zfly9)

13 years, 1 month ago

I get the test message to work fine.. Then I try the form and it says it went through but I never receive anything..

Can someone post a screenshot of everything in the Contact Form 7.. I think that’s where I’m lost.. The articles are a bit confusing on it.
Rev. Voodoo
(@rvoodoo)

13 years, 1 month ago
I have never had a problem with contact form 7, on godaddy installation

There aren’t many settings, mine are set up as:
```
To:
my actual email address

From:
[your-name] <[your-email]>

Subject:
[your-subject]
```
That’s it…. on the left. On the right I have:
```
From: [your-name] <[your-email]>
Reason: [checkbox-539]
Subject: [your-subject]
Website: [website]

Message Body:
[your-message]

--
A message from VoodooPress Contact Form
```
And that was really it….

As for godaddy mail, why would anyone ever use it? Don’t they charge for it? Either way, I highly recommend using google apps
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=google+apps+email+for+domain&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

If you have a domain, you can configure google apps to run email using your domains. It’s all free.
zfly9
(@zfly9)

13 years, 1 month ago

I’ve heard that godaddy doesn’t allow google apps to work..

Callum Macdonald
(@chmac)

13 years, 1 month ago

I believe GoDaddy block outgoing SMTP traffic and require you to use their SMTP server, which I believe is mail.secureserver.net on port 25 with no authentication, but I could be wrong.

Love & joy – Callum.

zfly9
(@zfly9)

13 years, 1 month ago

it’s relay-hosting.secureserver.net

blackestred
(@blackestred)

13 years, 1 month ago

Thanks to all your inputs, I’m able to configure the Contact Form 7 and WP-mail-SMTP plugin on Godaddy…

BUT funny thing I noticed:

I tried to change the “FROM” field in the Mail settings as below to a static string value so that I could filter it to a folder once it gets to my inbox:

From: Random static string
Subject: [your-subject]
Website: [website]

But once I saved and tested the Contact Form, I get the error:

“Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”

I changed the FROM field back and it works just fine.

From: [your-name] <[your-email]>

I changed the FROM value again and I get the same error, and changed it back to find it works perfectly OK! I did it twice and got same results.. not sure if its a configuration issue on my end.
Anyway, I worked around the issue by changing the SUBJECT field to a random string and the Contact Form works just fine.