Lost password and Premium notifications

[armaclans]

To buy premium, a user is directed to paypal, once the transaction is complete, the admin "us" has a notifier in the admin panel of how many premium members need to be approved...

Occasionally, users will pay for premium and we will get the paypal notification, but we do not get notified in the admin panel... we have to manually go find the account, then activate via drop down and set the start date.

Another issue, With all members, when trying to receive a lost password request, the email is never sent..

Are these known bugs?

 

[cajkan]

Hello Armaclans,

I have the same issue with the premium notifications, its kinda hard to track what causes the problem but this is from what ive found out.

When user purchase premium:
1. Sometimes Premium status dont change and Premium Start Date (YYYY-MM-DD) - its empty field, while Total Days and Remaining days are filled up correctly, so we need to enable premium status to Active and set the start date.
2. Sometimes Premium status and premium start date are all fine, but Total and Remaining days are filled with 00-00-00 / 0000
3. Sometimes example if user purchase 14 days premium /2weeks, Total days its 15 days
4. Sometimes Premium Start Date is 1 day ahead, so it needs to wait untill that day pass

Ive been tracking almost an year, and by checking everyday your paypal you can notice whats going on more carefully. I know premium payments needs to be double checked maybe something is missing there.

About the e-mail on lost password, if you are using hotmail try to change gmail or something else, sometimes spam filters do ugly things, but if you can wait few days later everything will be fine.

 

[Mark]

No issues with lost password email notifications, but your host reputation, and 3rd party spam filters can cause issues.

I was not aware of the premium status issues but thanks to both of you for outlining what you are experiencing, I have not noticed this on my lists but this function is long overdue for some updates, so we will roll them into a coming release.

 

[Basti]

The premium issue is most likely due people not returning to your list ( you are being redirected back to merchant in 10 seconds ), so a start date or whatever never gets into database.

Next premium release make use of paypals notify url where then the checks happens instead on the url where people return to. That should be more bulletproof

 

[armaclans]

Awesome,

And I cannot see that to be an issue with email notfications, not only do we have the best of the best hosting, but also with a company that is extremely popular... And I have tested the lost password with multiple emails, hotmail, google, yahoo, etc.. nothing in either spam or inbox...

 

[Mark]

Please ask your host to check the logs when you trigger the lost password function. They should be able to quickly identify what happens on the server side and see if something is preventing the mail from being sent.

 

[armaclans]

Ok I tried asking hostprovider - "bluehost" they didnt understand what I was trying to ask.

I have my own dedicated box, so I can see the error logs, and nothing shows up when the lost password function is triggered. ALSO, when signing up, the email is never sent out saying welcome..

I made a script,

<?php
mail('armaclans@gmail.com','Helo','This is a test','From:test@test.com');
?>

and it worked perfectly.. I have tried using a fresh install.. so what could it be?

 

[Mark]

Can you check your admin settings and make sure you did not enable SMTP?

 

[armaclans]

By admin settings are you talking about hosting admin settings or visiolist..
and if you are talking about Visiolist, I do not see any option that says enable SMTP



Also, am I doing something wrong with paypal..

I just tested Auto Approve Premium Members, and created a sandbox account, went through everything, and was brought back to a page that says:

Premium Membership Option
URL link was:

http://temp.armaclans.com/index.php...d&amt=5.95&cc=USD&cm=testaccount&item_number=


Premium did not activate, I went to check on the user via admin, and saw the same issue, the premium values had been placed, but the premium start date was blank.. I feel like I am doing something wrong...

 

[Mark]

In Visiolist - admin -> settings -> other settings

make sure all SMTP setting boxes are empty.

 

[armaclans]

Yes all SMTP boxes are empty

 

[Mark]

Then I am at a loss, mail functions work perfect on all the lists I have access too. Are you sure your host was not able to spot any issues in the error_log? Regardless of mail() or SMTP functions the error should 100% be in the log... but bluehost is a consumer grade host and might be minimizing logging.

can you check if both of the following methods work on your server?

<?php
mail('nobody@example.com', 'the subject', 'the message', null,'-fwebmaster@example.com');
?>

<?php
$to = 'nobody@example.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .'Reply-To: webmaster@example.com' . "\r\n" .'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

 

[armaclans]

temp.armaclans.com/email1.php

<?php
mail('armaclans@gmail.com', 'the subject', 'the message', null,'-fme@thedevinmiller.com');
?>

temp.armaclans.com/email2.php

<?php
$to = 'armaclans@gmail.com';
$subject = 'the subject';
$message = 'hello';
$headers = 'From: me@thedevinmiller.com' . "\r\n" .'Reply-To: me@thedevinmiller.com' . "\r\n" .'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Both worked.



Bluehost is consumer grade host at the beginning price, I am paying to be on my own box..

 

[armaclans]

I did some extreme digging, and found this,

on line 164 in "sources/misc/skin.php"

 }else{    
       
        $headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
        $headers .= 'Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8' . "\r\n";
        $headers .= "From: {$CONF['list_name']} <{$CONF['your_email']}>\r\n"; 
       
        mail($email, $subject, $body, $headers);
    }

  }

I changed

    $headers .= "From: {$CONF['list_name']} <{$CONF['your_email']}>\r\n";

to

    $headers .= "From: ArmaClans.com <help@armaclans.com>\r\n";

And now it is working.

 

[Mark]

This was my next question, in admin -> settings

Your email address:


this is where the value for $CONF['your_email'] is set, there are a few possibilities here like using a different domain as the sender, exim can be configured to block spoofed emails etc.

 

[Basti]

Just want to give headsup regarding emial.
Arma remember yesterday ive made an test account? this morning the mail arrived at 10 am, thats some huge delay i would say

And the header used was this one.

$headers .= "From: ArmaClans.com <help@armaclans.com>\r\n";

I saw in settings you use a gmail email and not that one, Did you always used the gmail one when you said it aint working? Cause i know some hosting can prevent certain email patterns from sending emails, had that issue with several clients before on the "popular" hosts. One one gmail couldnt sent any mail, on another yahoo was prevented to send any mail.

 

[armaclans]

I believe for security reasons Google SMTP is blocked from sending out emails on my hosting box, when I found this out, I did a very bad thing and changed the code to a different email instead of just changing the email in Visiolist admin.

Now it's weird to hear about the delayed email, while testing, I noticed it to be almost instant.

I wonder if it had something to do with our hosting propagation that was going on around that time

 

[Basti]

Yea, the premium emails also arrived within few minutes, but that one email not, just thought to let you know.