New registrants not getting emajils

[rcane]

Can someone speculate why "approve and send email" isn't sending an email?

Local mail server issue perhaps?

Helping a friend test his by registering a few test users and this far no emails have been received.

[Kindred]

are ANY emails being sent by that system?

[rcane]

are ANY emails being sent by that system?

Yeah. One to a gmail just came through right now.

The previously unsent (and still not received was Hotmail).   Seems isolated in that regard.

[Kindred]

hotmail sucks....    the problem is 99% likely to be on the hotmail side, not the forum/server side...   Hotmail rejects emails without any notification based on some bizarre set of conditions

[rcane]

I was only using hotmail as a random test account fortunately.  it seems to be sending things now.

[shawnb61]

Hotmail.com is owned by Microsoft, and seems tied to something called "outlook online" also (live.com, IIRC).  You can setup free email for both online to test thru Microsoft.

A while back (Feb 2023), these accounts all stopped receiving email from my guitar fx site. 

icloud.com email users as well.  Interesting, if you have an apple icloud account at all, you can use it for email, and some folks do...

Different symptoms - some weren't delivered, some had corrupted email internet headers, rendering the email contents blank.

I was still running PHP email at the time.  I finally converted to SMTP, and now everything works fine for all 3.

More & more providers appear to be rejecting / having issues with PHP type email. 

[rcane]

well, hopefully the install I'm helping a guy setup and manage won't be needed for very long.

[Sesquipedalian]

I was still running PHP email at the time.  I finally converted to SMTP, and now everything works fine for all 3.

More & more providers appear to be rejecting / having issues with PHP type email. 

Yes, this is true. PHP's basic email sending system does not support any of the more advanced features like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC that receiving email servers use to help prevent spam. As a result, email sent via PHP's system are more likely to be marked as spam or even rejected entirely. Switching to SMTP means sending all outgoing email messages via a fully configured email service. In the great majority of cases, that SMTP service will have support set up for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, resulting in much better delivery rates.

[rcane]

Stupid question, but if this admin creates a mailing list (that's within the limit of his ISP allowances) and uses the domain-created email in cPanel, would that work rather than using the SMF feature?

I was under the impression SMF just used the mail engine that it is sitting upon where installed. 

[shawnb61]

Stupid question, but if this admin creates a mailing list (that's within the limit of his ISP allowances) and uses the domain-created email in cPanel, would that work rather than using the SMF feature?

I think the short answer here is yes.  I think a more valid answer is "it depends on how the email is configured (or not)"...

I was under the impression SMF just used the mail engine that it is sitting upon where installed. 

If you leave the default at "PHP", yes, this is true.  And the point above is that that is increasingly a problem.  More & more mail services are getting very picky about whether the email sender is authenticating properly.

For the best results, you want to:
 - Use SMTP, not PHP
 - Setup a DKIM & SPF
 - Ensure the domain of the sending email address used in the "from" matches the domain on the DKIM record (you can pick anything, but it's best if it matches)
 - I think DMARC is more optional, but is a good idea also

Your host should be able to provide you with the proper SMTP info, e.g., server name, etc., to enter in SMF's email prompts.

Your host should be able to setup DKIM & SPF & DMARC for you.

Some helpful info on what these all are:
https://chemicloud.com/kb/article/smtp-vs-php-mail/
https://www.mimecast.com/content/dkim/
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-spf-record/
https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/dmarc-fail/

All emails have "internet headers" associated with them.  Start looking at them...  Send yourself an email from your site...  Most email clients have a "view raw" or "view internet headers" or "view original" feature - that lets you look at the REAL email content, not the pretty formatted email content.  They give you information about how YOUR email provider interpreted the SENDING email provider's authentication info.  In an ideal world, you want to see:
You cannot view this attachment.

In this example, you can see that the sender told the recipient via the DMARC record to flat out reject any emails where dkim & spf didn't look right.