Member Email Issues

Hi there,

I'm having the same issue as pholcomb. My Joomla site and all components are up to date and the used email settings are basic, using the core phpmail.
When I manually send an email to a user via the CB userprofile page, this works and gets sent and delivered, but the forgot username/password mails are not sent. Also new users do not get their registration/welcome mail, so they can not verify their email address. Therefore they can not activate their new account.

I've also tried with my own test accounts and discovered that it does work for email addresses that use the same domain as my website, but it appears not to be working with other email addresses.
I've tried to change the subject of the registration email as krileon suggested, but this had no effect. I also tried to change the settings for "Registration Email Name" and "Registration Email Address" with no effect. My settings were to leave these two fields blank so the Joomla default is used.

So it appears that there is some sort of extra check in the new user registration mail and the lost username/password mail, which results in this behaviour. Could you please look into this?
Thanks and kind regards.

I've also tried with my own test accounts and discovered that it does work for email addresses that use the same domain as my website, but it appears not to be working with other email addresses.

Then you've an issue either with your mailer server or your configuration regarding outbound emails.

I've tried to change the subject of the registration email as krileon suggested, but this had no effect. I also tried to change the settings for "Registration Email Name" and "Registration Email Address" with no effect. My settings were to leave these two fields blank so the Joomla default is used.

The From Address in Joomla needs to be an email address registered to the mail server you're sending from. So if you domain is cb.invalid then your from address must be from that same domain (e.g. test@cb.invalid) otherwise it's typical for your mail server to block the email due to spoofing. The same applies to the from address in CB > Configuration > Registration, but it should use Joomlas if left blank.

I'm sorry, but I do not have an issue with my mailer server nor with the configuration of outbound mail, since (almost) all the mail possibilities that the site has to offer are working fine, except for the 'new registration' and the 'lostpassword'.
In the CB configuration I left the 'from name' and the 'from email' blank, so, as expected, it uses Joomla's settings. In my Joomla settings I configured an email address with the same domain as the Joomla site.

But to test some more, I disabled the CB system plugin and created some menu items with the default Joomla user registration, lostusername and lostpassword. Strangely enough (for me) the behavior is the same:
- new user registration with an email address where the domain is equal to the Joomla domain => no problem
- lostusername/lostpassword for that same user => no problem
- new user registration with an email address where the domain is different from the Joomla domain => no mail is sent
- lostusername/lostpassword for that same user => no mail is sent

What I don't understand is what could be different in the behavior? Is it so different to manually send an email message generated on the website vs an email message that is sent automatically? But then again, I have other components installed that automatically notify a user via email, and they all work fine. It's just these user settings that won't work. And what could be so different in sending to an email address from the website domain or to another email address?

I searched on the Joomla forum and found this topic, that helps to debug what is actually happening.
forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=706&t=957207&p=3504015&hilit=register+new+user+no+email#p3504116
But in my case that did not give me any useful logging.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this?
Your help is much appreciated!
Kind regards.

What I don't understand is what could be different in the behavior? Is it so different to manually send an email message generated on the website vs an email message that is sent automatically?

The common thing for both of those usages is they are a Joomla and CB user store. Since it's also happening with Joomla alone then it's possible something is interrupting the Joomla user store. If this was the case though the CB user wouldn't exist during CB registration and would fail.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this?

Possibly a 3rd party user plugin interrupting the user store. Within Extensions > Plugins disable all User plugin types except "User - Joomla!" and retry. Aside from that I've no idea. As you've already confirmed your issue isn't isolated to just CB, but also Joomla registration and forgot login so has to be something earlier in the process or the mail server rejecting those emails.

Hi all,
Just an update to inform you my issue is solved. I contacted my webhost (one.com) and their support first advised me to not use the "PHP mail" setting in Joomla Global Configuration, but the option "SMTP". So I configured my Joomla configuration with a valid account and the emails were sent again. Two days later I received a reply from my webhost where they advised me to preferably use the "PHP mail", with the extra info that the "from address" must be a valid account as well.

So there you have the cause - in my case - of this. I used to use only an alias email address, which seems to work fine for most generated emails. But for the newregister and the lostpassword mail it appears to be necessary that the from address is not just an alias, but a valid mail account must be used. This also goes for PHP mail, which doesn't really require a specific account to be set up.

To summarize: you can use the PHP mail in Global Configuration, but make sure that the from address you use is a valid account with the same domain as your website.
I hope this helps others.