[BNM] disappearing php emails

[Jason Bailey]

Hello,


> A site I'm trying to sort out sends welcome / activation emails using php
> mail, but quite a few people have said they aren't receiving them. Enough
> people have said it's not in their spam folder that I reckon they're
> sometimes just not being delivered. (I've tested it on all my email
> accounts without any problems).


Could be anything from refusals to sender verification failure which we 
use. This means that we silently drop emails that can't be verified which 
can be a pain; especially if you're trying to work out what's wrong.

Do you use php's send mail function. I'd recommend the php send mailer
<http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/>

At the very least you can configure the return path to something 
appropriate (e.g. an email address to store returned messages). I'd also 
suggest a log too. Are you getting returned messages? Have you checked the 
headers on the (test ones you sent) messages for the return path to make 
sure it's sensible and not a black hole.

I keep mentioning return path as I had similar issues and realised that 
messages were not coming back to me as the reply-to (from etc) address was 
not the same as the return path which doesn't seem to be possible to set 
with the standard php send function. I could be wrong.

I also Bcc emails to a secret account (well not that secret) so at least I 
can resend them quickly if someone has lost the original email.

The php mailer also allows you to add more headers than the standard php 
send function.


Jason