Notifications?

[Pashina12]

So, I used to get an email notification when someone replied to a topic I'd posted in. Then a few days ago, this stopped happening, even though I haven't changed my settings. I even went into my user cp to see if it had been changed, but no, the settings are still as they were...

[velotrain]

Some functionality seems to be lost while the moderators are testing the new release.

 

BTW - the notification isn't automatic, you need to Follow the Topic. You may well be doing that and it's stopped working, but it isn't clear from your post.

Edited March 28, 2017 by velotrain

[Pashina12]

Sorry for the lack of clarity - yeah, I've got it set to automatically follow topics I've posted in.

[cteno4]

Pashina,

 

This may be due to it being bounced by your mail server as spam. With it sending almost the same message repeatedly the forum looks like a spam sender, especially If there are a few folks on the same email system on the forum getting them. Also the header verification requirements change differently with different systems and the forum updates don't always track all these (this is a mess tomdeal with). This happened to me way back and I think the forum software stops trying to send email notifications when this happens. The forum header was fiddled with some and it worked for a short bit then another change was needed and It was just too much to try to make it seep working with my hosting company. I'll check with Martijn on this.

 

Btw I still get the pm email notifications and that may be because there were a lot fewer of these than post notifications that could happen.

 

Unfortunately the whole email verification world is a mess these days, it's become a huge hassle that I'm slowly getting out of with clients and moving them to professional email services to try to avoid the problems as it is such a mess.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[Pashina12]

Well, they're not going to the Spam folder either, I'm just not getting them at all. In any event it is by no means difficult to come to the forum and see if there's anything new, just was surprised that the notifications suddenly stopped coming.

[Densha]

I've had some strange database errors popping up on me during the past few weeks as well, so I think something in the software is definitely corrupted. However, as everyone already said, when Martijn has upgraded the forum software we can probably be of better help.

[Martijn Meerts]

Sorry for the late reply, been a bit busy recently with the new job and haven't been feeling too well either.

 

The email notifications are currently not working due to the smtp service we were using having disabled our account. There were too many bounces (likely from bots registering with fake email addresses), and the forum software doesn't handle bounced emails at all. I need to set up a new smtp service and see what can be done about the bounces, I'll try to get that done ASAP, hopefully this weekend.

[cteno4]

No worries martijn, you are a busy boy with a new job!

 

Not sure if keeping email notifications is going to work. All the isps are constantly changing things on bounces, blacklist, etc so it may be a too much of a chase to keep it working well and the rep high enough. Also the notifications are all so similar some filters just assume they are spam. It's such an ever changing target and not all that coordinated...

 

When my isp started bouncing notifications years ago (before spam got huge) it was first due to evolving header formats and data, then when don corrected that my email server filter decided they were too similar and frequent so they went to spam and then even blocked the ip so I turned off almost all notifications and got them to open the ip and I backed off the filtering until it let pm notifications thru.

 

Jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

I've added a new SMTP server, so notifications should be going out again. However, there will be servers that block the notification mails, because it's a shared SMTP service, and the IP address(es) of the service may be blacklisted due to other people abusing it, even though the service needs all sorts of set up to make sure you're actually sending valid mails.

 

All mails sent from the new SMTP have their status logged, so I can see when mails get blocked, and how many get blocked. If too many get blocked, I'll look for another SMTP service.