TXP install user account emails do not arrive

jayrope · 2025-11-28 21:44:27

Hi all,

I’ve a weird problem here with a client site (TXP 4.88 on PHP 8.1): User account emails do not arrive.
It’s been confirmed, that the sending domain isn’t blocked on the receiver site and DNS records are fine.

Emails from the backend upon account creation (or sending password resets) are reported to be sent fine, there is no errors in my install.
Yet respective emails do not arrive, even when i use one of my own accounts elsewhere (gmail or sthg.)

Where else could i look for troubles or what’s a good way to debug this problem?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Bloke · 2025-11-28 22:29:10

I have the same issue. Even on 4.9.0. And I’ve no idea why.

Messages to my own domain (the one hosted on the server) are fine and come through to my webmail account, but anything else the system generates – password resets, login invites, etc – always disappear. DKIM, SPF and DMARC are all set up, mxtoolbox claims everything is fine, but they just… never arrive. And when I look in the mail error log, there they are, piling up, rejected by the recipient domain for random reasons like a spam score of > 3.4 or something.

No change if I mess around with the envelope header settings either.

Also, once I’ve sent an email (e.g. from a contact form) from someone and it bounces, the next time a message is composed from the same sender, it doesn’t even attempt to send. Just sits there dumbly when you press Submit. No errors, no nothing, just… like it’s a dead button.

Sending email is getting near impossible unless you pay for it, which I’m loathe to do for things like my domain. All it takes is some script kiddie to launch a sustained attack on one of my sites with smd_prognostics installed and I’ll get 4000 emails – one from each attempt – and a bill for every message.

I keep meaning to see if I can tweak the plugin to only mail once every so many hours, with a ‘digest’ of the issues missed (according to a pref frequency) but I keep finding other stuff to do instead.

So, sorry, no actual “fix” suggestion. It does seem to be provider/domain specific.

Bloke · 2025-11-28 22:36:44

One thing you can do, btw, is put the site in debugging mode. You may get additional info speewed out or in the page source.

On 4.9.0, btw, in debugging mode, you get an smtp_log file created in your temp dir with all the exchange info between client and server. That makes it a lot easier to diagnose this kind of thing.

Bloke · 2025-11-28 22:37:17

One thing you can do, btw, is put the site in debugging mode. You may get additional info spewed out, or in the page source.

On 4.9.0, btw, in debugging mode, you get an smtp_log file created in your temp dir with all the exchange info between client and server. That makes it a lot easier to diagnose this kind of thing.

jakob · 2025-11-28 22:45:18

How about hooking it up to an email relaying service in-between?

Something like smtp2go, Postmark, ImprovMX or ForwardMX. I think most of those have a free low-volume plan. Certainly you could test with them. I have a host that has no own email and provides Postmark for sending transactional emails and ImprovMX for allowing email submissions in lieu of that. I’ve tested that before and it worked by using Postmarks SMTP details via the advanced email settings in txp v4.9.

EDIT: Actually, the site using Postmark that I can recall uses zcr_postmark and the API rather than SMTP to send mails from Textpattern. That plugin is from zcr… days so may need minor adaptations to match the new callbacks in com_connect.

Bloke · 2025-11-28 22:55:42

I don’t even remember adopting zcr_postmark, let alone any of the code. Sheesh. Only ten years ago too.

jayrope · Today 13:13:36

Thank you Bloke and Jakob for your ideas.

My hosting suggests: “you will need to create an email account under yourdomain.com and configure SMTP within your CMS using that email account”.

Is that possible?
Apparently TXP otherwise uses an internal email address basically resembling sthg like username@ourmaindomain.com – but for all domains hosted on my account it is that same address.
I assume, that this could be a default phpmailer address?

In any case this address got flagged as spam apparently (which is crap, because it ONLY sends TXP user accounts)

jayrope · Today 13:15:06

Bloke wrote #341395:

One thing you can do, btw, is put the site in debugging mode. You may get additional info spewed out, or in the page source.

On 4.9.0, btw, in debugging mode, you get an smtp_log file created in your temp dir with all the exchange info between client and server. That makes it a lot easier to diagnose this kind of thing.

I did find a mail_log in my Cpanel backend, which let’s me see the errors, too. Debug mode (on 4.88) didn’t show me much (though a ton of other errors ;)

Last edited by jayrope (Today 13:16:15)

Bloke · Today 13:19:11

jayrope wrote #341408:

you will need to create an email account under yourdomain.com and configure SMTP within your CMS using that email account. Is that possible?

Not in 4.8.8, sadly. Only 4.9.0+ has external SMTP ability.

jayrope · Today 14:08:38

Bloke wrote #341410:

Not in 4.8.8, sadly. Only 4.9.0+ has external SMTP ability.

Is that already usable? And I am wondering how many addons I’d render useless, when updating… hmm hmm

Bloke · Today 15:23:57

It’s more than usable. I’ve had it running on live sites for over a year while we’re still tinkering.

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