eform not sending mail - possible reasons?

Hmm, if I ping mail.anorexiabulimiacaretest.co.uk I get unknown host, if I dig it I get NXDOMAIN, if I telnet to port 25 I also get unknown host so it would appear to be not visible to me, try it from your box.

However if that were the case I’d expect you’d get this as well ’warning: fsockopen(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed’ also.

A quick google reveals this for SMTP connections :-

’After reading some posts on the internet, I found some clues. It seems that it is a php bug in versions lower than 4.3, check phpinfo() and see the version of your php’

hm! Interesting - well, my php version is 5.2.5. I’ve also sent a ticket to my hosts to report what we’ve discussed here - Hopefully they can give some insight too.

I believe my hosts do allow to send mail out of their severs, they recommended to me that I use SMTP.

I think one of the main problems is that I don’t know enough about phpmailer, eform, modx and server config in general.


I believe its something to do with the temporary URL - and will purse this further when I move it over to the live server.

If they recommend SMTP, they may not allow the PHP mail() function, which is what is used by default. SMTP requires a server, a username and password for a mail account to use for the mailing. Whole different ballgame from using a simple mail() function, which will send mail from anybody.

I’m guessing that sottwell is right on both counts (she usually is ) and your host doesn’t allow mail() to send to outside addresses. You’re best and easiest bet is just to configure eForm to use SMTP. I suspect that will make your problem go away. With SMTP, BTW, you can use any SMTP account you have anywhere to send the mail, even if it’s not at your host.

I recieve this error when attepting to send with SMTP (easy newsletter):

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to mail.anorexiabulimiacaretest.co.uk:25 (Connection timed out) in /home/abctest/public_html/manager/includes/controls/class.smtp.php on line 105

He’s implying he is using SMTP already with easy newsletter and it doesn’t work.

Just thinking, this seems to be a common topic on these forums, I had a prob with PHP mailer initially and had to swap to SMTP with the Swift mailer, just wondering if there’s any need here for a ’mail check’ helper module that independently checks your mail setup and even maybe suggests what your best settings are in a more comprehensible way. I’m thinking of the SMTP setup forms in most e-mail clients that have buttons like ’check what the server supports’ etc. It could fairly easily ask for some params then at least check whether the default mail call will work or not, it could even print out ’call eform with these parameters’ stuff at a pinch.

Quote from: shamblett at Oct 02, 2008, 05:47 PM

I recieve this error when attepting to send with SMTP (easy newsletter):

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to mail.anorexiabulimiacaretest.co.uk:25 (Connection timed out) in /home/abctest/public_html/manager/includes/controls/class.smtp.php on line 105

He’s implying he is using SMTP already with easy newsletter and it doesn’t work.

Just thinking, this seems to be a common topic on these forums, I had a prob with PHP mailer initially and had to swap to SMTP with the Swift mailer, just wondering if there’s any need here for a ’mail check’ helper module that independently checks your mail setup and even maybe suggests what your best settings are in a more comprehensible way. I’m thinking of the SMTP setup forms in most e-mail clients that have buttons like ’check what the server supports’ etc. It could fairly easily ask for some params then at least check whether the default mail call will work or not, it could even print out ’call eform with these parameters’ stuff at a pinch.

Oops . . . you’re right. Your idea is a good one, but in my experience almost all of the problems are caused by hosts blocking mail() and are solved by switching to SMTP (and it’s still possible that the OP doesn’t have the SMTP parameters completely right).

AFAIK, no one has ever had trouble sending mail through SMTP with the SPForm contact form (or mail(), when it’s enabled), which also uses phpMailer (although I suspect that SPForm has no where near the number of users that eForm has). It’s possible that eForm’s implementation of SMTP has some quirks.

I had kind of the same problem. It turned out that gmail moved the sent messages to the SPAM folder.