Sendmail function not working

[northst2]

Ok, so I have experienced this problem with both Opencart and now Tomatocart installed from cPanel.

Opencart I was unable to get a full 100% resolve for, but got somewhere, as for tomatocart, I have gotten nowhere and I am getting frustrated as a business owner.

When you create your store and set it all up, and a customer orders something, you want an email to go to both you and your customer saying an order was placed. This worked for a short time on Opencart using my gmail email under "sendmail" vs smtp. Then this feature stopped. I attempted to correct it by going smtp, ssl and non ssl, using various fixes Opencart says to use. No dice. I then decide to create an x10 email (admin@myddomain.x10host.com) and put Opencart back to sendmail. Sure enough this fixed the problem half way. I was now getting order confirmation emails, all be it slow to receive (I know, it's pop3) But my customers still were not getting any. I was informed by Opencart that this could be a problem with settings or configuration settings that could be their side or my host (x10) side. They failed to look into it other then that (I know their support lacks)

I then decide to install Tomatocart, so I can get on with business. For the past few hours under testing mode. Emails were being sent both ways like they did during the very start of opencart. I was using my admin@mydomain.x10host.com and once again the sendmail protocol, port 25. All was fine, then all of a sudden without me changing one thing anywhere, it stops working again all together. I ran several orders to test if it was at least being seen in the cPanel email area (roundcube webmail) and nothing was showing. Checked the error logs of the store, nothing, checked the generic email x10 assigned my account (northst2@mydomain.x10host.com) no errors showing there. However, customers can still get forgotten password emails and I get out of stock emails so I know the sendmail is working. However order confirmation emails will not send to me or my customers as it once before did with Opencart. Is there anything I am doing wrong or could this be something x10 is able to help fix?

 

[leafypiggy]

Hey norhtst2,

I'll take a look at this. Are you receiving any specific errors from emails?

 

[leafypiggy]

Please try to send/receive emails now.

You're being stopped by our spam filter.

I can suggest to try and send your emails as text as well as HTML. As this is the main reason you're being stopped.

Also, try using SMTP to send the emails, as they are also being stopped because of incorrectly formatted headers.

The other main reason is because of the content of your emails. They contain many references to smokeless cigarettes (obviously), and our spam filter is catching them and weighting them +4.5 because of that. The rule is:

#SMOKELESS
body        __KAM_SMOKE1    /smoke anywhere|electronic cig|smoking alternative|prado|e.?-?cigs/i
header        __KAM_SMOKE2    Subject =~ /smoke|e-cig|perfect.?.gift|no cancer|electronic cig/i
header        __KAM_SMOKE3    From =~ /(smoke|e.?-?cig|electronic cig|vapex)/i
body        __KAM_SMOKE4    /No carbon monoxide|Smokeless Direct|No Tobacco|no tar|no cancer|quit smoking|electronic cig|e-?cig/i

meta        KAM_SMOKE    (__KAM_CLICK + __KAM_SMOKE1 + __KAM_SMOKE2 + __KAM_SMOKE3 + __KAM_SMOKE4 >= 3)
score        KAM_SMOKE    4.5
describe    KAM_SMOKE    Smokeless cigarette spam

Those are some of the reasons you're being stopped/blocked as spam.

 

[northst2]

From what I can see, the store's error log shows nothing out of the ordinary, the email northst2@.... shows nothing either. As for the admin@.... email, it doesn't show anything. When it was working, I would get the order confirmation there first until Gmail retrieved it for me via pop3 settings. But now, nothing will show up there at all except of the Out of Stock warning email when the stock goes low

 

[northst2]

Emails are being sent as text. I am not sure how to even configure it to send as html/text. Is there a way to work around this with the servers for the moment until we can build our finances up for a premium account?

 

[leafypiggy]

Re-read my above message. I edited it a bit.

I've also whitelisted you, as you're obviously not spamming.

 

[northst2]

I am going to see what I can do to try editing some of the headers as you recommend for smtp sending. I should also ask that to you while I can. Our store sells Electronic Cigarettes and accessories in accordance with strict legal regulations in Canada. Is this something x10 frowns on at all?

 

[leafypiggy]

Nope, that's fine with us--as far as I know.

Your emails just happen to contain content that gets flagged down by our spam filter. We have a high volume of users, and many users either use us to spam, or they don't maintain their script installations which get spammed, and cause spam to be sent out. E-cigs happen to be a big spam item lately (I get lots in my junk mailbox).

Do you have any other questions? I'm happy to share any information that I can.

 

[northst2]

I'll have to keep that in mind especially with our customers. We're happy to say that we look at our business as one that respects other's privacy. I do thank you for all your help. I do have one question at the moment. Suppose I have 8 or 9 customers on my store at once placing an order, because of how fast those 9 confirmation emails get sent out, could that flag us again? If I have any questions, I'll let you know

 

[leafypiggy]

With the whitelisted email, you should be fine. But I'm going to check with my administrator for you. I'll edit this post when I find out.

 

[northst2]

Ok, thank you for all your help Neil, we really appreciate it

 

[leafypiggy]

Hey,

So I had my administrator lower the impact of the smoking spam rule. You'll still need to fix the header issues (with tomatocart). And just improve the content of the emails overall so they look less spammy. You can reply to this topic if your emails keep getting stuck and I can look at them again.

I'd also recommend taking out the instructions for sending the bank transfer -- that's wicked spammy. Try getting a paypal plugin to process payments instead of doing bank transfers.

 

[northst2]

Yeah II am not a fan of the transfers myself. I am hoping to have a credit/debit solutions system up by next week to improve our customer's shopping experience. I was trying to play around with the header issues, and I am not even sure where to start. Any ideas what I should fix first?

 

[leafypiggy]

Let me install opencart and take a look.

 

[leafypiggy]

I think changing your email address to <something>@yourdomain.x10host.com would help. And then, just set up SMTP in the settings of the site. It should help quite a bit, as sendmail seems to be doing weird stuff with the forwarding address... You can check out http://x10hosting.com/wiki/What_are_my_email_settings for more information.

 

[northst2]

Hello Neil, I just tried processing an order using new SMTP settings as suggested. Can you confirm if it looks better on your side?

 

[leafypiggy]

Looks good. They're still up around 4.5-5 as spam score, but better. One suggestion is to modify your email template to include html tags.. right now it's just html, and therefore it's giving you +0.625 for it not being wrapped in <html> </html>

Other than that, again it's the HTML MIME type only again giving you +1. I don't know if it's possible with your software (tomatocart?), but see if there's an option to send HTML and plaintext emails.

 

[northst2]

Hi Neil, I just retweaked the email sending out for orders, can you let me know if you see anything that shows positive progress?

 

[northst2]

Actually, it looks like none of them sent

 

[northst2]

I just took care of getting a .com btw. I set my domain to the proper nameservers (Those are working good) and set it in cPanel as a parked domain so it would direct traffic to my northstarvapes.x10host.com address, but so far it doesn't work. When you go to enter the .com in the address bar, it goes to northstarvapes.com/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi

Am I missing something to get it to properly direct traffic to the x10host address?