Forum Notification emails not being formed correctly

Regular Joined: Jul 27, 2007 Posts: 77

The emails generated by the forum under the latest release (and may earlier releases, I haven't checked) are not being formed correctly.

They do not appear to follow the SMTP standard (which I believe is RFC 821). It is missing (part of) the recipient.

I know (or at least I think) that emailer.php and smtp.php are used in processing emails but can anyone confirm exactly the process (and files) used to send out notification emails (for those subscribed for updates)

I would also like to take the opportunity to revise the content of the mail.

Paul

registered · Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 12:06 am

Question: are you forced to use SMTP? If not, why use it then? phpBB can work just fine without turning on the SMTP option as long as your host allows mail() to work (which is what the rest of nuke uses btw).

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 6:48 am

I haven't changed any defaults. I don't know whether the package is using mail() or smtp but that is almost irrelevant. Once the mail leaves your server the hand-offs must all be smtp compliant until it reaches the destination mailbox.

But having said that if there is an error in anything within RN we shouldn't encourage a workaround just because there is one. Why not fix the problem?

Looking further into the problem it only seems to occur on topic notifications, and even more it seems that the recipient is in the BCC field. There does not seem to be a TO: rcpt set in the process which I am guessing is for privacy reasons.

I am not sure the standard truely supports mails sent only to bcc recipients

The only place this really shows itself is in my version of Outlook 2003 which due to what it thinks are malformed headers, shows me all the headers as part of the message which turns a 5 lines response into a 30 line one.

Paul

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:10 am

p17blo,

First this:

Quote:

I haven't changed any defaults. I don't know whether the package is using mail() or smtp but that is almost irrelevant. Once the mail leaves your server the hand-offs must all be smtp compliant until it reaches the destination mailbox.

But having said that if there is an error in anything within RN we shouldn't encourage a workaround just because there is one. Why not fix the problem?

I am not suggesting not to fix a problem. We never know just exactly where someone is coming from when they post questions / issues and so I have to ask questions to find out the real issue you are concerned with.

Nuke uses the PHP mail() function for ALL emails being sent out with the exception of the phpBB pieces (Forums and Private Messages). With the phpBB pieces, one CAN configure it to use a direct SMTP connection rather than use the PHP mail() function. To configure your nuke forums and PM's to use SMTP is rather pointless since the rest of nuke does not use SMTP.... hence why I asked just to make sure we are not working on a pointless exercise here. Also had to rule out if you were having "connection" issues instead... again, we don't know where you are coming from.

No-one has ever complained about this before either so it also made me unsure as to what exactly the problem was you were having. Now, it sounds like it is in one place, with the "topic notifications". What, exactly, are you referring to just so I know? Is it when new posts are made against your topic within the forums, or are you referring to something else within nuke?

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 9:34 am

montego wrote:

p17blo,

... with the "topic notifications". What, exactly, are you referring to just so I know? Is it when new posts are made against your topic within the forums, or are you referring to something else within nuke?

You are correct with your first explaination. When you create a new topic or post a reply there is an option to
[quoote]
Notify me when a reply is posted
[/quote]
It is the email generated when a reply is posted that seems carry the problem

Btw, I have just confirmed this isn't limited to RN, it actually exists in PHPBB 2.0.22 - At least on my version - I have just changed my email address on this board to see if replies from RN direct have the same issues (which they do not appear to)

I will need for someone to respond to this post just to test this for me Smile

Paul

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 10:13 am

Just for your information the "To: Undisclosed-recipients:;" was changed by the phpBB team to avoid different conflicts, abuse and of course to prevent spam. In my phpBB version 2.0.4 it was already changed To: Undisclosed-recipients I believe.
Its possible to change this if you like it but its not recommended.

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 11:13 am

I can understand that, and your response tested that this 'problem' comes from all sites based on that code.

So I really need to work out whether this is actually a bug with the way Outlook 2003 is dealing with the email or whether it is truly a standards issue.

I will firstly look at the client

Paul

Posted: Sat Aug 25, 2007 4:53 pm

Agreed.

New Member Joined: Oct 20, 2007 Posts: 20

My host has disabled phpmail, i have the newest rn installed. how do i override the phpmail stuff and use smtp for everything?

(ps. all of the other e-mail functions work fine so far. reply notes, user e-mail from forums etc. but the new user registration e-mails are not getting out, nor is the "resend e-mail" as they are directly formed from phpnuke using mail(). how do i configure php to only use smtp for ALL mails?, I.E. is there a non floodgate style workaround to ONLY use SMTP for all nuke mail requests?

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 5:21 am

Cannot do unfortunately for all of PHP.

Due to this and many other threads that are showing this is a very clear trend, we are delaying the RN 2.20.00 release to include a SMTP replacement.

Sorry for your immediate inconvenience. Rest assured, though, that all our PHP-Nuke "brethren" are suffering just the same.