[Resolved] Content Forms not sending out Notification Emails

[Author]

Posts

[melaniS]

I currently have 2 x post type forms that users fill out to submit. Both of these forms have an email notification that goes out to the site administrator to advice them a new post has been submitted and to check then publish it.

I expected to see: An email notification

Instead, I got: Nothing

Currently no emails are being received / sent out. I've tried multiple different emails, as well as submitting the form from both my mac and the laptop. I've tried selecting "Send notification to a WordPress user" as well as "Send notification to a specific email address" neither of them result in an email being received.

[Nigel]

Hi there

First, can you use a plugin such as WP Mail Logging (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-logging/) to check whether the mails are being sent or not (vs. being sent but not arriving).

If you submit a form that should trigger a notification, you should see a record of the sent email in the mail log. (Toolset notifications are built on top of standard WP emailing.)

If you don't see outgoing emails then could you test for conflicts.

Disable all non-Toolset plugins and switch theme to twentynineteen then try again. If the issue disappears then it should be possible to determine the source of any conflict by a process of elimination.

Let me know how that goes so I can see how to proceed.

[melaniS]

I Nigel,

Thanks for your reply. Already have WP Mail Log installed - and nothing is being sent. 🙁

Have disabled all but Toolset plugins and tested. I couldn't switch to twentynineteen though as it only gave a white page with "skip to content" on it 🙁 Which meant I couldn't see the form to test it.

No emails going out though 🙁

[melaniS]

I was able to switch to TwentySeventeen and see the form - still no emails going out 🙁

[Nigel]

Could I get access to the site to take a look how your form is set up?

If I don't spot anything I'll take a copy and install it locally so that I can do some testing without affecting the live site.

Although I won't be making any changes, you should have a current backup.

[Nigel]

I've tried a few things on your staging site and I still can't get the notifications to work.

I'm taking a copy to install locally: if they work there it would point to a server configuration issue, but I'll let you know what I find when I have the site installed and tested.

[melaniS]

Ok, thank you.

[Nigel]

I can't make a copy of the site (it's a big site).

I tried All in One WP Migration which successfully created a backup (of 2Gb) but the server kept timing out before I could complete downloading it.

Duplicator wasn't even able to make a backup in the first place.

Can you please check your debug logs to see if there are any warnings or errors when submitting the form?

If you haven't already, turn on the debug log by editing your wp-config.php file and change the line with WP_DEBUG like so:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

That will create a debug.log file in your /wp-content/ directory which you can examine in any text editor. Try submitting the form again and then inspect the log. If you don't find the debug.log file it means it didn't generate any warnings or errors.

If there are no helpful messages then can I ask you to make a duplicate that I can install locally?

I'll mark your next reply as private in case you need to share a link to the duplicate with me.

[Nigel]

It wasn't working when I was testing earlier, and I think those emails in the log are from test posts of yours.

I've made some further test submissions and their notifications *have* been sent.

I reactivated Elementor (which I was testing without) and the Litespeed caching plugin (likewise) but the notifications continue to work.

I'm not readily able to account for why it has started working. Can you continue to add back the plugins etc. that you need and keep testing to confirm it still works?

If it trips up and fails at some point let me know what you did immediately prior to that.

[melaniS]

I've just gone back and added the plugins that were being used one-by one.... emails received.

I re-activated the theme.... emails received.

So, for some reason, the emails have now started coming through again. I've not touched the site or done anything while you were testing (wasn't even in the same room as my computer) so I have no idea why all of a sudden they are sending through again.

Problem is... they are still NOT sending on the live site. 🙁

Is there something that would have been reset by de-activated and re-activating plugins? I don't understand why that would all of a sudden make it start working. I've received every test email and everything is turned on like it was when I started the night. I'm so confused.

[melaniS]

On the live site - it's now sending test emails - ie when you go into where the notifications settings are, at the bottom you select "send test email". On the live site, those are coming through. However when I do a submission - no email is coming through. 🙁

[Nigel]

When I was testing on your staging server you had already de-activated most plugins, but not the Litespeed caching plugin nor Elementor.

I don't see how simply de-activating/re-activating Elementor could have any bearing on the problem, but imagine that the caching plugin could.

So can you disable the Litespeed plugin on the live site for a while and re-test?

[melaniS]

Hi Nigel,

De-activated Lightspeed on the live server, still no emails being sent 🙁

[Waqar]

Hi Melani,

Thank you for sharing the update and sorry to learn that the issue still persists.

Nigel is away on vacation until tomorrow and I'll be following up on his behalf.

Since the issue with the outgoing emails seems to be intermittent and haven't been linked to a particular theme or a plugin, I'll recommend focussing on the server's mailing policy.

I've seen some hosts block or restrict outgoing emails for different intervals, based on the content/frequency of the outgoing emails, in order to curb spam. It would be a good idea to get in touch with your host to confirm if any such policy exists.

Also if you haven't already tried, you can also activate any SMTP mailing plugin like "WP Mail SMTP" ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/ ), which can use any of your existing email accounts with SMTP support, to send out emails directly, which is known to improve email delivery.

If you get better and more consistent results with SMTP plugin enabled, this would confirm that this is your host's configuration/outgoing email policy issue.

I hope this helps and let us know how it goes.

regards,
Waqar

[Nigel]

Do you know if your server is configured to use HTTP2?

We have one other unexplained issue with notifications being sent where the server was Litespeed and HTTP2 protocol was used which has consumed an enormous amount of resources (ours and the host's) in trying to identify the problem which we are still unable to replicate, but which in the other case has been "fixed" with a workaround that includes adding some config rules to .htaccess.

I don't know if your case is related, but if you could clarify the above that would suggest that it possibly is.