Email header question (kinda urgent)

[vBKat]

I moved hosts and now all the mail that gets sent from vbulletin comes in from the wrong email address. I am pasting the hosting company's FAQ about this, but I don't know how to fix it:

Why do e-mails from my webpage come from < username > @ < host## > .hostmonster.com when I have specified otherwise?
Solution This is because our servers require you (or your script) to use a properly formatted, valid From: header in your email. If the From: header is not formatted correctly, empty or invalid our system will change the from address to be <username>@<host##>.hostmonster.com. To stop this, you must change the script you are using to correctly use a valid From header.

Examples of headers that should work would be:
From: [email protected]
From: <[email protected]>
From: "name" <[email protected]>

Examples of headers that will NOT work:
From: "[email protected]"
From: user @ domain.com

So I don't know how or where to change that. I have the email address set up in vbulletin as my email address, just [email protected] nothing fancy, no spaces, no quotes. Help! I am considering turning off my board until this is fixed because I really don't want people knowing my hosting account username, which is currently part of the email address they are getting mail from!

[Steve Machol]

That depends on the email. The vB generated emails come from the webmaster's email address you set in the Admin CP.

[vBKat]

Err, yes, obviously. I guess I didn't explain well enough. Let me try again:

I have been running vBulletin for many, many years. It's worked fine. Email notifications such as "there has been a reply..." have always come from the webmaster's email as set in the Admin CP. All of this is very straightforward and has always worked fine.

Then I changed to a new host. Nothing had changed in my settings--the webmaster email was the same as it always was. However since I moved to the new host, suddenly all of the emails do NOT come from the webmaster email as it is set, but instead they come, as is indicated in the bit I quoted above, as being from <my username>@<my hosting company's domain>. This is totally unacceptable because I don't want everyone to know my hosting username. It's none of their business. Not to mention that it looks cheesy as hell for the emails to come from that address.

I looked it up on my hosting company's Knowledge Base and found the above explanation--the one I quoted already. What it says is that if the From: header generated by the script (in this case vBulletin) is formed incorrectly then it will replace the email address you wanted with their lame one. It says I need to edit my script (in this case vBulletin) to correctly form the headers when it sends mail.

I have no idea where in the vBulletin coding it sets the formatting of the email headers it sends. The email address I have set in the Admin CP as the webmaster's address is just [email protected] which follows the [email protected] format without any quotes or anything like that that could mess it up, which means that it isn't how I've entered it that is screwing up the headers, it is whatever vBulletin does with it when it generates the email that is screwing up the headers.

So I need to know how to make vBulletin correctly form the header for the From: section.

Did that make more sense?

[Steve Machol]

I would have to see one of those emails but my guess is that your new host's email server is doing this. It's not something vB would change.

[vBKat]

Yes, it is their email server... I explained that twice now. Their server does it because of the way that vBulletin formats its "From:" header in the email headers of the mail it sends. I need to find out where that is formatted so that I can change the code to make it compliant with what my host's email servers require.

[Steve Machol]

Not sure exactly what you want but check all the 'includes' files for 'vbmail'.

Personally I would get away from any host that required me to hack vB to make email work propery, but that's just me.

For further help with this you'll need to ask over at www.vbulletin.org.

[vBKat]

Well I just got done moving my stuff to this host, it was a lot of work, plus I paid 2 years in advance, so I'm not moving again. Anyway, they say that the problem is that vBulletin is coded in such a way as to create nonstandard headers, so in their eyes, it's vBulletin's fault in the first place.

[Steve Machol]

Then they wiill have to provide some hard evidence of this so the Devs have a clue what they are talking about. It seems strange that of all the hosts they are the only ones I know of having a problem with this.