Joomla! Discussion Forums

How do I get sign-up emails and password requests to work on Windows Servers

I am posting this as it might be of use.

NB This is where hosting on Windows Servers

Problem was this, registration emails and new password request emails not being delivered. The confusion for me was that test emails to an email address at a different domain at the same host were working but a test to hotmail or yahoo failed. IE an email at a different host failed. This was due to measures implemented by the host to combat spammers hijacking their mail servers to send spam.

I tried all the settings in the Global Config/Mail tab - php,sendmail and SMTP. With SMTP set I could get the Contact form to send emails but the registration would still not work. The contact form worked because form mail from my site was being sent to an address at the same site/same host and so did not conflict with their spam blocking. It was outbound mail from my site that was being blocked IE the registration and new password requests.

I have come up with a solution that works thanks to the hosts knowledge base. The solution works for registration emails (IE the email verification email), new password request emails, and the contact form still works.

In Administration go to Global Config/Mail tab and set to PHP also complete "Mail From" with a valid email address at the domain.

Now put this code ...
       
ini_set("sendmail_from", "validemail@thedomain.com");   

NB change "validemail" and "thedomain.com" to the correct details for the site you are working on.

... at the top of the following two files

NB TIP : re-name the current files first so that you can restore easily if you have a problem. I always prefix the name with x_

components/com-registration/registration.php
components/com-contact/contact.php

Deep joy   

This worked for me with my host, it may work for you.

Slightly off-topic but for Newsletters, which is also a mail-out that was not working (for the reason outlined above), I have found that mosListMessenger now works without any adjustments to the code. Letterman does not work, nor MassMail, but these two are not nearly as good as mosListMessenger which gives you the option to set-up multiple mail lists and also has a patch that enables visitors signing up to the site to also be added to the newsletter database.


EDIT:

You also have to make the change in the same way in
components/com-content/content.php
so that if you are using the option to allow visitors to email page content, this to will now work

EDIT

These adjustments will need to be made after each update since the above files are often changed by the patch updates. Just made the changes after patch update to 1.0.10 updating.

.

Now I need to put it at the very top above the begining PHP tag?


Where exactly? This is where I put it and it still dont work for me.

Maybe this is not going to be an exact science even though it works for me at my host. This is exactly as it is in my files for one of the working sites. I have even pasted in the "non code" info to show exactly ...

contact.php




registration.php looks the same, these are the very first entries in the file. The address must be valid and you must put a valid address in Admin section where you have also selected php as the mail delivery option.

Has anyone figured out how to use a Windows Exchange Server to handle email ?