Thread email subscriptions - RANDOMN!

Hi there,

I had originally thought this problem was down to various ISP's - However something happened yesterday that changed my mind.

We have been running on WWF platforms since 2002 and recently upgraded to 8.05 in Feb.

Our new forum is now plagued by completely randomn issues concerning emailed thread notifications. In a nut shell, it works for some and for others it goes on and off and for others it just doesn't work! We've never had this problem with any previous version of WWF. Nothing our end has changed, same webserver (dedicated and unmanaged), same email software etc etc. Only change has been the upgrade to 8.05.

A summary of what is happening is described here:

http://www.npoc.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=999&PN=1

So why have I now decided that it's not an ISP issue after all and possibly something to do with the WWF 8.05 software?

Well back in Feb as I was designing the new forum using 8.05, I asked a Q in a thread on here (mod section) and subscribed to that thread. In the next couple of days after that I got a couple of emails pointing me to the new posts etc (my problem was solved cheers). Then I got no further emails concerning that thread until last night. I got a fresh email notification for the thread. I came back on here and actually discovered that there had been 2 pages of new posts in the last 2 months on that thread and I had received ZERO emailed notifications informing me! It has just stopped sending them, then out of the blue I got one for the latest post.

That's more or less what appears to be happening on my forum... Completely randomn as to whether the notifications are being emailed.

I've comprehensively searched these forums for anyone else having the same issues with 8.05 and can't find a sausage.

Our server is working fine, our host can not find a problem. We have nothing in any of the email client logs indicating anything is wrong and I check for any queues on a daily basis - There are none. All diagnostics on my email client show it to be 100%. The redirect of all forum associated emails (to XXX@npoc.co.uk) to me at my private email address, never miss a beat. I am not getting any bouncebacks or anything indicating an ISP is not liking our emails.

So why are some of my members getting the email notifications and some aren't? Why do some get them for a few days and then they stop?

This is damaging the ability of new members signing up, as some do get the validation email and some don't. It's also not helping our reputation as a club.

So to re-iterate.. Exactly the same thing has happened to my thread subscription to this forum.. I was getting the emails and then the stopped for 7 weeks and then suddenly appeared last night.

Anyone?

Many thanks and take care,
Shaun

PS - I will happily list all my tech spec if that helps?

Right just had a quick look for your domain and you don't have a SPF record setup and you appear to have multiple MX records for your domain pointing to the same mail srever:-

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=npoc.co.uk

Also just did a reverse DNS lookup on your mail server and you don't appear to have reverse DNS setup for it:-

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=mail.npoc.co.uk

All these problems will prevent your emails from getting through as most hosts will now do a reverse DNS lookup and check the SPF record to check that the email is from a legitimate mail server and not spam. As well as this most hosts will not bounce back undelivered mail without an SPF record encase the sender is a spam harvester.


Edited by -boRg- - 21 April 2007 at 11:51am

Emails in 7.9x to 8.05 are sent exactly the same. The only thing that has changed in the last 6 months is allot of ISP's are getting allot stricter with who can email their users and will not accept emails unless the mail server is setup correctly.

Setting up a mail server correctly can be more difficult than setting up a web server.

The first thing you need to do is contact your web host and ask them to have reverse DNS setup to your mail server.

Once this is done, edit your DNS server and remove the extra MX record reference, it looks like you already have an A record seryup for the mail server so you don't need to chnage that part.

You also need to setup an SPF record for your domain, to  do this go to,  http://www.openspf.org/ which has a wizard for creating an SPF record for your mail server. You then use copy and paste the SPF record it creates for you and setup a text (txt) record on your DNS server with this SPF record.

Once you have done this you should find that the majority of your emails get through.

The reason why you need these is that most receiving mail servers will now do a DNS lookup to see if the mail server the email is coming from is a real mail server, the SPF record for your domain tells the receiving mail server which mail servers are allowed to send email for your domain.

Since the beginning of this year more ISP's have started doing these checks and it does work as it does stop allot of spam as spam usually comes from a non real mail server. So if you don't have your mail server setup correctly you will have problems sending emails.