Will pay through paypal for php mail form solution

[goldphilly28]

Okay so if you know the cause already and can fix this issue, without google apps, i will pay you money through paypal. This issue is all over the forums but no real solution and does not make any sense.

The php mail form on my x10 site works, almost. it forwards to info@[mydomain].com a local x10 mailbox. the autoreply works for all email addresses. but it is very iffy and though worked in the beginning does not work now with my hotmail address, even though my hotmail address ALWAYS gets the auto reply, but the form itself is not forwarded. sometimes it works with gmail accounts, and sometimes not. it almost always works when i enter in a fake email address. i tried making the from and reply to static addresses and it doesn't help. I changed the text/html to text/plain and it helped a little bit but still very uncertain.

This is obviously something wrong with x10. when i send email from my hotmail directly to the info address it goes through. I think that x10 is filtering its own mail that it is sending to itself because it deems it as spam since the source is not verified.

Feel free to respond here or PM me if you know the solution and want to get paid because i need this fixed, fast.

 

[Livewire]

It -could- just be that hotmail has our email servers blacklisted, cause they do indeed have us blacklisted. I'll still forward this to admins, but if hotmail is blacklisting us again, there's not a lot we can do.

 

[goldphilly28]

again, it has nothing to do with hotmail. hotmail is receiving the autoreplies. it is the local mail server that is rejecting locally created php mail forms with from: hotmail addresses. no where along the way are hotmail servers involved.

thank you.

 

[Livewire]

That actually makes -sense- for it to block a from: hotmail address.

http://x10hosting.com/aup

"* Forging of any TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header information in an e-mail or a newsgroup posting; "

Having a "from" address set to hotmail when it's being sent from x10hosting would be considered forging the headers inside the e-mail - that'd explain why it won't let it go through. Forging headers is what got us blocked at more than a few email providers in the past - doesn't surprise me that we're actively blocking them -before- they get sent now.

 

[goldphilly28]

even when i set the from: and reply-to: fields to my own email address it still is not going through, as if sending to myself is also blocked. could anyone recommend a php setting variable that will be acknowledged by the server? again if im sending to myself it still doesn't go through...can someone post a php mail script that WORKS?

 

[Livewire]

I did forward this to one of the admins already, not sure if they've seen my message yet or not. With any luck they can shed a bit more light on what's going on.

 

[stpvoice]

Hello,

This script works on all free servers:

<?php
$to  = 'email@domain.com' . ', ';
$subject = 'Your subject';
$message = '
Enter the message contents here.
';
$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'To: First Last <email@domain.com>' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: First Last <email@domain.com>' . "\r\n";

if (mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers) ) {
       echo "Email sent";
    } else {
       echo "Email sending failed";
};
?>

 

[goldphilly28]

yeah that's not the issue either because when i put in completely fake emails it works fine and gets to the inbox, displaying the from and reply to as the fake address no problem...

so yeah unless you are actively only filtering hotmail and gmail accounts i doubt that is what is going on.

i highly recommend you guys look into this issue, i am more than willing to help because this issue is ongoing ive read about it from a number of people and honestly im about to switch which is sad because you guys truly do have an amazing service and ive already recommended a bunch of people.

 

[stpvoice]

Hello,

That script was originally configured to send to my personal gmail account. It is and has been working fine on all free servers since I put it there. I strongly suggest you look into investigating the issue with your script, or using a third party mail service such as Google Apps to bypass the blacklisting. Sending to hotmail is a known issue, and due to the nature of free hosting we do end up blacklisted by quite a lot of providers. I'm sure you'd have more success if you upgraded to premium, as the mail servers are different and there is less abuse as it's a paid service.

Thanks.

 

[goldphilly28]

could you please post this script i don't mind sending directly to my gmail account. thanks.

 

[stpvoice]

I posted it before. Scroll up.

 

[goldphilly28]

Missed that, thank you! So to update on some successes I've had.

Through trial and error I have discovered that if I completely remove the from: and reply-to: headers from the contact form part of the php mail script (ie the part that delivers the form to MY inbox) the problem seems to be resolved, albeit the From field as it lies in my inbox now includes my x10 non forum username as the NAME and this EMAIL address: goldphil@web5.vital.x10hosting.com. Would love to change that as having a proper email and reply to field would be wonderful to save time editing each time i reply, but considering the spam filters i think im pushing my luck with the free hosting. regardless this is a modest solution.

To make things clear ofcourse the autoreply part of the php script has no problems what so ever as all headers are preserved. So to recap I believe that things are not working correctly when using php mail to send myself an email. perhaps my form is not perfect as I have not used your complete form but it is very close to your form's structure. Once I add the From: header which is identical to the To field, it stops working. Any idea whether this is a mail server issue or my own mistake? And again sometimes it works with the from header, but not when there is a hotmail address in one of the form fields. again its so complex i can only assume you guys are employing some radical spam filtering that is making some weird decisions.

Perhaps through my discovery one of you webmaster geniuses could recommend a work around for the headers?

---------- Post added 06-04-2011 at 12:32 AM ---------- Previous post was 06-03-2011 at 10:33 PM ----------

Well now without changing anything, nothing is working! The system here seems unstable. Works, doesn't work. I maybe over my email quota from all the tests, i changed my ip no help. Even the autoreplies don't go through now. Oh well. Maybe someone will add some useful information.

For now all I can say is I tried alot of free hosting sites, started with [host removed], pretty good, mail problems and they put their icon into your pages. x10, great cpanel and quick setup, probably the best, except for mail problems. awardspace, fastest, a working php mail service. all the rest in between (and there are a lot), not that great.