XF 1.5 Users not receiving email notifications

[rowlers]

Hello,
I am very new to this and still very much finding my way via google and here..
I have a couple of users that no longer receive email notifications that they have a new PM, or a reply to a thread they are following. Most other members are fine, I guess its a user setting/permissions issue but just don't know where to look.
Any pointers?
Many thanks

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

They only will get one reply until they read the thread again. If they only visit the forum home page, or read other threads, they won't get a new alert or notification. They have to view the thread again.

This is the "break" from how vBulletin did things. In vB, all you have to do is visit the forum and all "can send notification" flags are reset for all "subscribed" threads/forums.

I am having @Xon modify https://xenforo.com/community/resources/persistent-alerts.4962/ so that you can offer the old vB functionality. Peristent Alerts currently allows you to continue to get notifications on watched threads, regardless of even visiting the forum - but to some, that might be a bit much. That's why I pushed to get the vB notification functionality added into that addon

regarding the conversation notifications, they should be getting these regardless of having read the convo...that works differently. I would have them check their preferences https://xenforo.com/community/account/preferences and make sure "Receive email when a new conversation message is received" is checked. If it's not that, then they should check spam/junk folders. If they are using gmail, hotmail (msn, outlook, live, etc), yahoo, or AOL, there are ways of "whitelisting" the forum's email address to prevent any messages from going to junk. Also this is something you must do online, in the webmail. Some people thing that adding an email address to the "VIP" on their phone does it, or a setting on their email client does it...no, it doesn't. The filtering has to happen at the source, online.

I have example tutorials I made for each of these services:

https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-yahoo-e-mail-users.822/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-gmail-users.824/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-aol-e-mail-users.823/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-hotmail-or-any-microsoft-e-mail-users.821/

If they are using gmail, and not downloading to an email client, it's possible that the forum emails are getting pushed to the "promotional" tab. I shut all these tab views off so I don't have that problem, but I've been told it happens.

 

[whynot]

I have a couple of users that no longer receive email notifications that they have a new PM, or a reply to a thread they are following.

Privacy > Preferences

Automatically watch content you create

• • and receive email notifications

• Automatically watch content you interact with
  • • and receive email notifications
• Receive email when a new conversation message is received

 

[rowlers]

Thanks for the reply folks...

They only will get one reply until they read the thread again. If they only visit the forum home page, or read other threads, they won't get a new alert or notification. They have to view the thread again.

This is the "break" from how vBulletin did things. In vB, all you have to do is visit the forum and all "can send notification" flags are reset for all "subscribed" threads/forums.

I am having @Xon modify https://xenforo.com/community/resources/persistent-alerts.4962/ so that you can offer the old vB functionality. Peristent Alerts currently allows you to continue to get notifications on watched threads, regardless of even visiting the forum - but to some, that might be a bit much. That's why I pushed to get the vB notification functionality added into that addon

regarding the conversation notifications, they should be getting these regardless of having read the convo...that works differently. I would have them check their preferences https://xenforo.com/community/account/preferences and make sure "Receive email when a new conversation message is received" is checked. If it's not that, then they should check spam/junk folders. If they are using gmail, hotmail (msn, outlook, live, etc), yahoo, or AOL, there are ways of "whitelisting" the forum's email address to prevent any messages from going to junk. Also this is something you must do online, in the webmail. Some people thing that adding an email address to the "VIP" on their phone does it, or a setting on their email client does it...no, it doesn't. The filtering has to happen at the source, online.

I have example tutorials I made for each of these services:

https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-yahoo-e-mail-users.822/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-gmail-users.824/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-aol-e-mail-users.823/
https://www.algaescrubbing.com/threads/attention-hotmail-or-any-microsoft-e-mail-users.821/

If they are using gmail, and not downloading to an email client, it's possible that the forum emails are getting pushed to the "promotional" tab. I shut all these tab views off so I don't have that problem, but I've been told it happens.

The 2 users that are affected are using different email addresses, on is icloud.com, the other cgi.com.

Privacy > Preferences

Automatically watch content you create

• • and receive email notifications

• Automatically watch content you interact with
  • • and receive email notifications
• Receive email when a new conversation message is received

I have had the users check their spam folders and I have checked their preferences and they appear to be set correctly, i.e. they should be receiving emails...

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Do you have access to your sever email logs?

icloud has always been problematic for me. They don't allow people to whitelist anything, they decide what is good or bad and delete emails without telling the sender or recipient, and it's kinda random.

No idea what cgi.com is, seems like a business. They might have a corporate spam blocker like barracuda or edgewave.

What about your server configuration, have you check reverse DNS or anything like that to make sure it set up correctly? Check that on www.mxtoolbox.com, SMTP check

 

[Paul B]

If their preferences are set correctly, there are no errors in the ACP error log, they have visited any watched threads, and other members are receiving emails, then it is most likely due to the mails being blacklisted/spam trapped.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dealing-with-spam-filters.366/

 

[rowlers]

Do you have access to your sever email logs?

icloud has always been problematic for me. They don't allow people to whitelist anything, they decide what is good or bad and delete emails without telling the sender or recipient, and it's kinda random.

No idea what cgi.com is, seems like a business. They might have a corporate spam blocker like barracuda or edgewave.

What about your server configuration, have you check reverse DNS or anything like that to make sure it set up correctly? Check that on www.mxtoolbox.com, SMTP check

I guess these are on the hosting server, I'll need to ask the host for these....

If their preferences are set correctly, there are no errors in the ACP error log, they have visited any watched threads, and other members are receiving emails, then it is most likely due to the mails being blacklisted/spam trapped.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dealing-with-spam-filters.366/

I could not find anything obvious in the ACP logs. I shall check out the link above.
Many thanks for yor help...

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I guess these are on the hosting server, I'll need to ask the host for these....

Check your website at www.mxtoolbox.com, just punch in the URL where your emails are sent from, run it, then select SMTP

I could not find anything obvious in the ACP logs. I shall check out the link above.

Your ACP will not tell you anything about email delivery.

Do you have the automated bounce handler enabled?

 

[rowlers]

Check your website at www.mxtoolbox.com, just punch in the URL where your emails are sent from, run it, then select SMTP

Your ACP will not tell you anything about email delivery.

What should I be looking for here?

Do you have the automated bounce handler enabled?

Just checked, no, this is not currently enabled.

As I said above, I'm like a fish out of water here have never ran my own forum before. We relied heavily on our previous host to look after EVERTHING and since we moved to a new host, we are struggling with the intricacies of it all!

And THANKS again for your help and patience!

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

?

punch in your URL (without www) and click MX Lookup.

Wait until it shows results then click SMTP Test.

You will get something like this



If SMTP Reverse DNS Mismatch is flagged, you have a problem.

This above shows the first 3 flagged but that is due to a server setting in place "Introduce a delay into the SMTP transaction for unknown hosts and messages detected as spam" which will cause these to flag on an MXtoolbox test. If I disable that delay, everything is green.

 

[rowlers]

This is the result:

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

What's your domain URL?

 

[rowlers]

What's your domain URL?

atgshaving.com

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

click "more info":

We were unable to perform a reverse lookup (PTR) on the IP Address of your mail server. This is a problem because many organizations will not accept email from a server without a PTR record.
We recommend performing a Reverse Lookup on the IP Address for your mail server to try to find the cause of the error. You will need to contact your ISP and ask them to setup a correct PTR record for you. You should ask that this record be the same as the hostname of your mail server. We also recommend configuring your server to include this name in your SMTP banner.

 

[rowlers]

I have just found our email logs and confirm that the emails are definitely getting sent out the user on cgi.com. The other user has not been active for the last few days so cannot confirm this yet.
I have access to all sorts of tools via cpanel, so I guess I just need to work out how to add this ptr record!
Thanks for your help folks.