Email bounce question

Hi Douglas,

First, I just wanted to say that the Ajax Contact form works great, very easy to implement and really nice looking.

One concern though: I installed in on a client site, and they said they were testing the form and not getting anything via email. I re-entered the email name in the recipient field, and everything seems to be working now. However, they wanted to see if there was anyway to know in the future if the email wasn't working. In other words, say the email isn't working (but we don't know yet) and someone fills out the form and sends it, is there anyway to detect that that email is not working? Like a log of email bounces? Something like that?

Thanks!

Joe

Dear Joe,

Some mail servers have specific set of rules that may prevent emails to get through. To avoid further problems I always recommend users to use SMTP, which solves most of the problems.

Here are a few common problems to check:

1. Does your account have SPAM filters?
If it does, check your junk mail folder (or trash, or whatever your particular program calls it.) It may have been received and filtered out. Fortunately most programs allow you to add it to a list of safe senders so it won't be filtered out in the future. If you set the mail settings to use SMTP usually solves this problem;

2. Are you sending to a legal address?
* a) Depending on how your host has things configured, sometimes you can't send a form mail to yourself@THISaddress.com if your form is on www.THATaddress.com . You may need to setup an email that corresponds to the site you are sending from, or see if your host allows you to add your other email address as an allowed recipient. Since all hosts are different, the best thing you can do is contact them.
* b) Special email sending requirements (e.g. the sender must be a valid email address in the website domain, whereas FormMail tries to make the email you receive look like it came From the person who filled out your form).

3. Do you need authentication?
When you send email from your mail program, do you need to provide a password for outgoing mail (outgoing mail authentication?). If you are unsure because you set up your mail a long time ago, the best thing to do is ask your host. This is usually required;


Best regards,

Wow! Thanks for the fast response Douglas. Using SMTP is a good idea, I hadn't thought of that. One other quick question:

Is it possible to have more than one recipient?

Dear Joe,

Sure, you just have to enter multiple email addresses separated by commas, in the Recipient Module Parameter.

Kind regards,

Perfect. Thanks for all your help and advice Douglas, I really appreciate it.

Joe

Hi Douglas,

Regarding point 2. b), about the FormMail. In contact enhanced each time someone fills in the form I receive an email that looks like it came actually from their email. I am having problems with my spam filter considering 50% of the form email as spam. Is there a way to make the emails look like they are sent always from a fixed email such as "contact@mydomain.com" or whatever I choose so I could set up that address in the spam whitelist to avoid this problem?

Thanks,

Daniel.

Dear Daniel,

Sure, it is possible, however it is not something out of the box. You will have to follow these simple steps below:
1- Open [Path to Joomla]/components/com_contact_enhanced/controller.php
2- Find these lines:3- In order to use the System's email uncomment the second one and comment the first one, so it looks like this:4-Or, if you want to add another email address, use if like this:
I hope these instructions are easy to follow, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,

Hi Douglas,

Very easy to follow, I used point 3 which is fine for what I need, works perfect!

Thanks for your great support.

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for the post,
it is a problem regarding to Yahoo server....
i had a problem, while filling a contact form and sending it, it gives me a message "Could not instantiate mail function" but after the changes suggested by you in this post , it worked for me.


Thanks a lot.