Sending Emails to hotmail accounts.

[Freezefusion]

Hey guys,

i have a problem sending emails to hotmail account from my board. Any idea how to solve this problem?

[Floris]

Hotmail blocks/bans emails from vbulletin forums sometimes. You can try changing the title of the email, the subject email phrase that is, and the body of the email, the phrase email body. This way it is different from normal and it might slip through their filter list.

[Freezefusion]

But my mail doesnt even end up in junk. It just doesnt reach the user at all .

[Floris]

You will have to ask your hosting provider to read through the mail logs and see what exactly happens. vBulletin just uses the internal php mail() function. If it is not set up correctly, or blocks ranges, etc .. vbulletin can't do much about that.

[Rider69]

I have this issue as well with some members...could it be possibly solved by using the smtp option versus the phpmail option?

[Xodus]

I have this issue as well with some members...could it be possibly solved by using the smtp option versus the phpmail option?

Try it. Make a fake hotmail account and test it. I'm not sure but the smtp uses differnt ports I think so it may work.

The easies thing to do is ask your host about phpMail function, or try this script:

<?php
$to = "[email protected]";
$subject = "Test";
$body = "Hmm, It works...";
if (mail($to, $subject, $body)) {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message delivery failed...</p>");
 }
?>

Fill in the [email protected] with your email and run the script. Copy / paste it into notepad and go to file-save then choose all files in the file type and name it "mail.php" upload it somewhere on your server and browse to it. If it works it works. If it doesn't, contact your host

[Zachery]

Two things are possible off the top of my head:

1. Your host does not have RDNS entries for your server.
2. Your host has disabled emails from being sent by nobody, but since other emails are working and its just hotmail, this is unlikely.

[fastforward]

Another possibility is that many email providers block anything that has an undeliverable return path. For example, if your mail is sent from [email protected] and yourdomain.com does not accept incoming mail for noreply, then it could be rejected. AOL do this without notifying the recipient.

See this thread for some more hints. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=226825

[Freezefusion]

1. Your host does not have RDNS entries for your server.

What does RDNS means? What is it meant for?

[kingele18]

try to use the smtp method
it will work

[fastforward]

What does RDNS means? What is it meant for?

rDNS is short for reverse DNS. It's implemented by defining a PTR record in your DNS zone file. PTR stands for 'pointer'.

[centralstreest]

I did the php script here and it sent the message to my hotmail. Now how do I fix it for all the replies and admin emails I'm supposed to be getting. I was getting them until I updated from 3.6.9 to 3.7.0 and now 3.7.1 isn't sending mail to hotmail, but sends to yahoo and gmail, but I don't use those. Here is my php mail settings under my diagnostics

SMTP: localhost
sendmail_from:None
sendmail_path:/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

but under my emails settings, I'm not using smtp! I've been battling this with my host and 6 staff members later, they're asking me the same questions and I already answered over there.

[centralstreest]

ok solved my problem. I searched through my hotmail settings and found it got thrown in my BLOCKED list for some odd reason. Not sure if I accidentally did it when deleting an email or something, but I placed the email in my safe list and tried the diagnostics in VB admin cp and it went right away!!

So to others, don't just check your spam list, check you OPTIONS > Blocked List!