E-Mail Sudenly not working

I host my own store on a Windows 2003 server and have been running fine for almost a year now. Recently we noticed that we have stopped getting mail.

Here is what I've found so far. I noticed that the middle numbers of the CC were not coming to me. Then while looking further, I found that all outgoing and "Contact Us" emails are not being sent. I installed the email archive viewer contribution and saw all the emails, with the exception of the middle cc of course (makes sense).

I created a fresh database and set up the configuration.php file on my store to point to the fresh database. I logged in and created an account on the fresh database and got the welcome email without a problem. I pointed back to the production database and tried again, and no mail. So something in the database has become corupt with the setup and configuration of the email portion. What would be stored in the database that would cause this?

Zen Cart 1.3.7
Version 5 MySQL
Version 5 PHP

Nothing has been changed and all parameters in the admin are correct.

Any help or direction would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks
Mike

Are you emptying your email log table regularly?

You said you host your site on a Windows 2003 server.
But ...

Where is your mailserver located? Who manages it? What configuration changes have happened on it recently?
Is the mailserver's address blacklisted in any of the blacklist directories?

Dr Byte,

I use my ISP's smtp server and point to that in the email configuration. I don't see this being an issue since by creating a fresh database on my server and pointing my current store to it by making only the change in the configure.php file to point to a different database and set the new email configuration section to use the same smtp server and email addresses clears up the problem. All the domains are the same and my ISP is not blacklisted.

Unless there is something I'm not getting on the outside, it seems to be at the configuration level of the system. I've tried restoring my database backups but the proplem doesn't go away. I've resorted at this point to use easy populate to bring my products over to a new database and reconfigure a new store, unless someone can think of a fix.

Thanks
Mike D

Kim,

This is something I have not done but I have not had many emails although I do use a lot of HTML. I didn't see a place to do that specificly in the store manager, is there another way to clear that out?

I did, while I was there, run a database optimization and clear the admin logs but that didn't fix it.

Mike D

mdegeiso:

I use my ISP's smtp server and point to that in the email configuration. I don't see this being an issue since by creating a fresh database on my server and pointing my current store to it by making only the change in the configure.php file to point to a different database and set the new email configuration section to use the same smtp server and email addresses clears up the problem. All the domains are the same and my ISP is not blacklisted.Very well.

Install the "Email Archive Viewer" contribution from the downloads area.
Then turn on Email Archiving via Admin->Configuration->Email Options->Email Archiving Active?
This will store all your outgoing emails into the database AFTER they are delivered to your mailserver.
Then use the Archive Viewer to look at their content.

This will do a couple things for you:

1. prove to you that they were handed off to your mailserver successfully. Thus any failure of delivery is something being rejected by your mailserver.
2. give you a history of what has gone out
3. give you the ability to look at the raw email content to see what might be causing the problems specifically

If you believe the problem is with a configuration setting in one store vs the other, then compare the settings in your "configuration" table between both stores. Compare "configuration_key" and "configuration_value" to determine differences.
Alternatively, you might find that you will even be able to visually identify which setting in your "Email Options" area is causing the problem just by comparing those screens and setting them the same in every area.
Your "Store Name" from the "My Store" section is also used for outgoing emails.

Well I found the problem. Looking at the archive I found all the emails that I've sent. So I started to compare the two databases and one by one, set the production site to what the clean database had been set to. When I set "Emails must send from known domain?" to "no" in the email configuration, my production site started to send emails again.

I've always had this set to yes and it has worked fine before. Would something that my ISP did cause this to have a problem?

mdegeiso:

I've always had this set to yes and it has worked fine before. Would something that my ISP did cause this to have a problem?
Well, since you said things "suddenly stopped working", I'd blame your hosting company's server administration first regardless. "Suddenly" almost always means "they" changed something.

Either that or your server got blacklisted ... which apparently isn't the issue in this case.

Further, since the "must send from known domain" setting specifically affects how outgoing emails look to the mailserver, it's possible that the server is blocking messages that are going out looking like they're coming from someplace other than itself. Most hosts will fine-tune their servers so that outgoing mail must look like it's coming from an email account that the domain is hosted as. ie: emails from software running on the web account running billsbooks.com would need to appear as though they're coming from "something"@billsbooks.com or else they're treated as spam and thus discarded.
In your case, if that setting isn't working when enabled, but "was" working previously, then either they've fudged something in the server configuration so that the mailserver can't tell what domain your mail "should" come from, or they've changed it so that they want all outgoing mail to come from "[email protected]" etc.

I have exactly the same problem. I installed a test site on the same server and that works, but my production database does not send out any mails.

I have tried to switch "Emails must send from known domain?" to "no", but it still does not work.

I have referted my database to an older date (when it was still working), but now it still does not work.

I have upgraded from 1.3.8 to 1.3.9c, but that also did not solve the problem.

It is really a mystery...

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

mdegeiso:

Well I found the problem. Looking at the archive I found all the emails that I've sent. So I started to compare the two databases and one by one, set the production site to what the clean database had been set to. When I set "Emails must send from known domain?" to "no" in the email configuration, my production site started to send emails again.

I've always had this set to yes and it has worked fine before. Would something that my ISP did cause this to have a problem?

I am currently facing this email issue. It seems it just stopped working on or after 6/11/10..

I turned on the email archive now, and see that did work. How do you interpret the information in the database? I see it, but I dont know how to make any sense of it. It doesnt have a failure log, just where it sent the messages, etc.?

is there a way to test sending out emails from the zen-cart backend? It seems I am just futilely clogging up the orders log with test orders.. and new test account creations..?

If it suddenly stopped working, and the emails ARE showing in the email_archive table, then the problem is NOT with your Zen Cart software. It'll be something wrong with your server or your domain or you've been blacklisted, etc, and you'll need to engage your hosting company for assistance.

I repeat: If the messages are getting into the email archive, then Zen Cart DID NOT encounter an error when handing off the email to the mailserver engine on your webserver. This means that something happened to the message AFTER Zen Cart was done with it, and that is completely outside the control of Zen Cart.

http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Understanding_Causes_Of_Lost_Emails

As for reading the archived emails, there's an Email Archive Manager addon for that purpose if you feel it necessary.

keewong:

I am currently facing this email issue. It seems it just stopped working on or after 6/11/10..

I turned on the email archive now, and see that did work. How do you interpret the information in the database? I see it, but I dont know how to make any sense of it. It doesnt have a failure log, just where it sent the messages, etc.?

is there a way to test sending out emails from the zen-cart backend? It seems I am just futilely clogging up the orders log with test orders.. and new test account creations..?

Sorry to had bothered you guys on this forum about this, it was working, it was just going to the spam box.. :/

DrByte:

If it suddenly stopped working, and the emails ARE showing in the email_archive table, then the problem is NOT with your Zen Cart software. It'll be something wrong with your server or your domain or you've been blacklisted, etc, and you'll need to engage your hosting company for assistance.

I repeat: If the messages are getting into the email archive, then Zen Cart DID NOT encounter an error when handing off the email to the mailserver engine on your webserver. This means that something happened to the message AFTER Zen Cart was done with it, and that is completely outside the control of Zen Cart.

http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Understanding_Causes_Of_Lost_Emails

As for reading the archived emails, there's an Email Archive Manager addon for that purpose if you feel it necessary.

Thanks so much, it was exactly that.. I think the google app spam box guard had changed some of the rules, etc.. and it was finally being put into the spam box. sorry to had bothered you Dr. Byte. :) Thanks for being here always, though.