It sounds like your hosting provider has disabled PHP’s mail() function, which is used by WordPress to send you email notifications, and is also used by contact form plugins and more.
This is a common safeguard employed by hosting providers when they suspect that another customer on the same server is sending spam emails directly from the server.
Another alternative is that PHP’s mail() function is still active, but spammer activity from the server has already caused any email sent from it to be blacklisted. This would result in the emails being sent, but never received by any email address with basic anti-spam capabilities.
You can check this by leaving a comment on your site and checking if you receive an email. Another alternative would be to use the Health Check plugin and sending yourself a test email from the plugin’s Tools tab to see if it works.
If you didn’t receive a test email, you could try using an SMTP plugin to configure your WordPress site to use your email’s outgoing mail server instead of PHP’s mail() function.
Thread Starter
alymcf
(@alymcf)
Thanks,
I wonder if this is related to the fact that I cannot send emails via gmail from any of my domain emails. I get the msg: ” Message not delivered
You’re sending this from a different address or alias using the ‘Send mail as’ feature. The settings for your ‘Send mail as’ account are misconfigured or out of date. Check those settings and try resending.
“
Thread Starter
alymcf
(@alymcf)
BY the way when I tried to activate Healthcheck it says “The plugin does not have a valid header.”
For issues sending email from Gmail, you’ll need to contact Gmail’s support.
As for not being able to activate Health Check, what version of WordPress are you running, and did you install it via Plugins > Add New in your Dashboard?
Thread Starter
alymcf
(@alymcf)
Looks like I had the wrong SMTP server set in gmail.
WP version is 5.6, PHP 7.4. Looks like Health Check might be too old.
Now that the email works, trying to change the email becomes less important lol.
Thanks for your help.
Looks like Health Check might be too old.
As you can see at https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/ Health Check was last updated 3 weeks ago and compatible with WordPress 5.6. Also, no one else is reporting this issue there.
Do you get the same error installing any other plugin from Plugins > Add New in your Dashboard?
Thread Starter
alymcf
(@alymcf)
HealthCheck now works, the only plugin I cant use now is Jetpack…
Been trying all week to update jetpack and keep getting messages about the server being busy “Update failed: Connection lost or the server is busy. Please try again later.”. I am able to update other plug-ins without any issue. Thinking the install might be corrupt, I just tried to delete it. I get the message “”Could not fully remove the plugin jetpack/jetpack.php”
WordPress
5.6
PHP
7.4.10
MySQL
5.6.49
Trying to update Jetpack Version 7.9.1 to 9.2.1
You’ll need to access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel (consult your hosting provider’s documentation for specifics on these), navigate to /wp-content/plugins/ and delete the whole /jetpack/ directory there.
Once that’s done, you’ll be able to reinstall Jetpack normally from Plugins > Add New in your site’s Dashboard.
