Contact Us Form Code Not Compatible with Auto-Responder?

[traytray]

Anne,

I am having a problem getting the auto-responder to work and my host, HostGator, is telling me that the problem is in the coding.

The problem:

I do receive the message that was sent from the Contact Us form to an email address that is forwarded from [email protected] to [email protected], and I have successfully set this up in cPanel, but I do not receive an auto-response to the originating email address (one of my own I made for this purpose).

The site is https://www.designerperfumesnob.com/...age=contact_us

Here is the response I have received from HostGator:

Hello there,


1) The form is submitted and an email address is supplied by the visitor.

2a.) The [email protected] email address (and not the visitor supplied email address) sends the email to itself at [email protected] which causes the auto-responder to not actually display the message in the mailbox (since it's sending it to itself).

2b.) The original message from the Contact Us form is also forwarded to [email protected].

It sounds like you would like to have the email sent from the visitor supplied email address to [email protected] (and thus forwarded to [email protected]) and send an auto-responder from [email protected] to the visitor supplied email address.

The best way to handle this would be to have your email/contact script set up to take the visitor supplied email address and email it back (instead of using the autoresponder) as the way the script is currently setup and the way the auto-responder works are technically doing what they are intended to do, but unfortunately is not what it sounds like you are trying to accomplish. As we are not able to do this for you, we recommend contacting a web developer to assist with this for you.

Please let us know if you experience any issues or have any questions or concerns.

Regards,

Matthew M.
GNU/Linux Systems Administrator II

Even if what they say is true, and the Contact Us form is not coded to behave the way I anticipated (using an auto-responder), how and where would I compose the message I want to tell the original sender if their is no auto-responder involved?

I have the log entry that shows the path of the emails if that would help you, but thought some of the information contained might be too sensitive to show in this post.

Thanks,

Tracy

[DrByte]

I'm not sure I understand what exactly you're wanting to do. Nor why.

It appears that your Zen Cart is doing exactly what it was designed to do. But you're trying to do something different.
What's the autoresponder for?
Why are you doing this "forwarding between accounts" stuff?

[traytray]

I'm not sure I understand what exactly you're wanting to do. Nor why.

It appears that your Zen Cart is doing exactly what it was designed to do. But you're trying to do something different.
What's the autoresponder for?
Why are you doing this "forwarding between accounts" stuff?

Thanks so much for responding.

The forwarding doesn't appear to be an issue. I forward mail sent to the store to my regular Outlook email client, using an email account name specifically for this purpose. Basically to save steps. This way all of my mail is in one central location.

The point of the auto-responder is a courtesy because I am not in front of the computer 24/7 and this way if I receive a message, the auto-responder would dash off a reply to let the person know their message was received and I will contact them within a certain time frame. As a potential customer, I would rather receive a quick courtesy reply containing a time frame than wait for an undisclosed amount of time. Even if I got back to them within the hour, an immediate reply is a nice touch. In my book. Maybe others don't agree, but I receive automatic replies from some sites and I appreciate the courtesy.

So right now, if someone uses the form, I receive their message in Outlook since it is forwarded to me. In cPanel, I set up the auto-responder to respond to a message coming in as I noted above. HostGator is saying that the auto-responder is not replying because the way the Contact Us form is coded, the auto-responder would just send a message to itself, which it won't do. It is not coded to send a reply to the email the visitor provided.

Please note that the auto-responder does NOT have a forwarding address to my Outlook, so the auto response would be coming directly from [email protected]. So I see no forwarding address conflict.

The forwarding address used is just for me to receive the original visitors message and I do receive that promptly.

I didn't realize there would be any problem. When I saw HostGator offered an auto-responder I thought it would be a snap to just write a short message and that would be that.

They said I would need a web developer to accomplish my goal.


Thanks for your time.

[DrByte]

To reduce the risk of messages being flagged as spam or not getting delivered because the address is from a 3rd party, the emails sent from your store need to be "from" the store.
The headers in the email are set to have a "reply-to" of the visitor's supplied email address, which is why when you click "Reply", their email address is filled in automatically.

I'm guessing that your autoresponder is based on the "from" address, and not the "reply-to" address. I can't help you change how the Hostgator autoresponder works.