I’m doing some development and today got onto trying to register a few dummy accounts to play with but the activation email is not being sent from either the default theme, my own theme or Twenty Ten

WordPress 3.1.1
Buddypress 1.2.8

I’ve searched and found all sorts of explanations and suggestions to use a plugin to change to SMPT but I think this is going in the wrong direction. If I write my own script and send mail via PHPs mail() function it works. If I go to the WordPress default login and click “Lost your password?” and put in an email address from an unconfirmed account I receive an email on that account and when I click the reset link in that email I can then login.

PHP mail() works on my system.
The default WordPress forgot password form sends email.
The registration form on Buddypress default theme does not send email.

The WordPress “Lost your password?” has <form action="url_to_site/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword …

The Buddypress forms are <form action =" " … Interestingly though if you click "Complete sign up" the form is validated and you are taken to a confirmation page where you can upload an avatar.

This sounds like a bug, swins like a bug, smells like a bug. Anyone know what it is, where it is and how I might squash it? I’ve been looking half the day and am posting here in the hope that someone has already found the blighter.

Cheers

TonyO

[@jmcquade Member 13 years, 7 months ago]

Same issue still here – using WP 3.1.1 and BP 1.2.8. The registration form takes a new user through the whole process, completes and takes to the confirmation page but no email is sent to the new user so that they can “confirm” their account. They appear to have registered but never get the email and they do not show up as a new user on the Admin side. Seems like a serious bug to me- if no new users can register. Also, I have used the suggestion of the “Mail From” plug in but it has NOT fixed the problem.
I hope someone has a solution soon. Thanks.
Julie

[@jamiewade Member 13 years, 7 months ago]

I also experienced this problem. It seemed that the e-mail’s were only being sent to Google Mail Accounts. To temporarily resolve this I just turned account activation off.

[@andrea_r Participant 13 years, 7 months ago]

Check your mail logs on the server to see if it was actually *sent*. Not being sent and not being received are two different things.

[@jmcquade Member 13 years, 7 months ago]

I checked the mail logs. Mine were not sent to anyone that has said they did not receive an email.
I only show sent ones for the few people that have been able to register with gmail accounts.

[@jamiewade Member 13 years, 7 months ago]

Yes I had the same problem. It appears the activation link is ONLY being sent to people with GoogleMail accounts.

[@aaronrockies Member 13 years, 7 months ago]

It’s possible that your server doesn’t support sending email. Check with your hosts.

[@andrea_r Participant 13 years, 7 months ago]

Tyr one of these plugins to change the mail-from address so the users’ email providers will deliver the mail.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=+%27Mail+From%27&sort=

[@jmcquade Member 13 years, 6 months ago]

I’ve checked the server and it does support sending email and has for a few new user registrations. Also, I’m using the Mail From plug in – it hasn’t helped. Any more ideas? I’d hate to have to start from scratch and scrap BP all together after months of development prep but we’re getting pretty desperate for a solution. Any thoughts? Here’s the site: http://fayettevilleforward.org/
All suggestions are very appreciated.

[@hnla Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

As Andrea_r pointed out earlier Not being sent and not being received are two different things You need to establish which of these two you are actually refering to. How have you tested your email functions? Have you checked through any mailer-daemon returned undeliverable notifications? What sort of accounts do the people have that are not receiving anything, Hotmail or the like? Have you set up PTR RDNS records and SPF records? failing to set these two records will almost certainly cause certain PITA email servers to bounce the email straight out and won’t even pass it as spam.

Ran a quick check and you appear to have no real mailbox/email server as your domain reports no MX records so not sure how people contact you under that domain, you have what looks to me a correct ptr record and it reports a canonical cname record that I’ve not seen appear in the context of a ptr check, there is no record of a SPF entry which isn’t unusual but some email servers will reject based on lack of available SPF record to lookup. It would be worth you checking with whomever set your dns records that all is correct and with your host that RDNS is set up and correct. These aspects can and will cause issues if not correct.

[@andrea_r Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

“and it does support sending email and has for a few new user registrations.”

So it has actually *sent* mail.

Edit:

Your server is not the problem. Not entirely anyway. I signed up to your site and got two emails – one with an activation link and one confirmation email. Exactly like I am supposed to.

So your problem is *not* the server is not sending email. The problem is some of the people signing up are not getting them. Which means it’s mostly on their end. You can do a reverse dns entry, like @hnla stated above, but really that’s all you can do for some places like Hotmail & Comcast.

[@webmystery Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

I’m having the same problem as Tonyone, and it goes away when Buddy Press is disabled. The first problem stated in this thread, the forgot password feature is not sending emails, is different than what the “me toos” are describing.

With BuddyPress enabled
A new user who creates an account gets their account notification email
The Fast Secure Contact Form works and sends email
The Email Users plugin works
BUT
The Bulk Password Reset plugin does Not work, neither does the ‘Get New Password’ on wp-login.php. Both of those trigger this error:
The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function…

This may not be a mail problem but a password rest problem pulling the wrong error message out of … someplace

I’m on a Bluehost server, running WP 3.1.3 and BuddyPress 1.2.8

[@webmystery Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

Update: Enabling the ‘Mail From’ plugin https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mail-from/ solves the problem.

I’m not thoroughly satisfied with this solution because it is too mysterious , but at least it is a solution.

[@webmystery Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

PPS: Prior to installing the Mail From plugin my emails were being sent from noreply@mydomain.org. Wonder if I had created an email account called ‘noreply’ if that also might have solved the problem,.

[@squirrel1 Member 13 years, 6 months ago]

The only way I was able to surmount the same issue (emails not being sent, i.e. new user notification, password reset emails) was to disable the following plugin:

“BP Disable Activation”
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-disable-activation/

Once I disabled this plugin, the missing emails flowed again.

As such, I returned the site to its default state of requiring new users to confirm their accounts.

[@andrea_r Participant 13 years, 6 months ago]

“Update: Enabling the ‘Mail From’ plugin https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mail-from/ solves the problem.

I’m not thoroughly satisfied with this solution because it is too mysterious , but at least it is a solution.”

It’s not mysterious – it;s a symptom of exactly what I described. The hosts on the receiving end are killing the emails that are sent because they were *automated*. Changing the from address so it come from a “legit” email, instead of wordpress@yourdomain, made it so it got delivered.

[@mikemcd22 Member 13 years, 6 months ago]

I am posting this here because it might solve part of the problem and it worked for me: I found this <a href "https://buddypress.org/community/groups/buddypress-pending-activations/&quot; While it does not solve the issue of members being able to approve themselves, it does allow the ability to resend an activation link (email) and to manually approve members in the Que. It works with WP 3.1.3 and BP 1.2.8. I hope this helps the scores of people desperately seeking admin approval of new user registrations.