Dreamhost is not sending emails to my specified inbox via contact form

#1

http://www.qsrecycling.com/contact

I’m hoping that someone can please help me I have been at this for days trying to find possible solutions with no outcome yet.

I have a contact form set up on my “contact us” page which is working but for some reason dreamhost is not sending emails to my inbox if the emails are tied to a popular mail client such as gmail, yahoo or aol

If someone uses a name@yourdomain.com than it gets to pushed to the inbox no problem

Here’s the funny thing, I have 2 more forms set up, both on the “get a free quote” and “request a pickup” page through Contact Form 7 and those are working fine after I changed the CF7 mail settings “From” field to jlawler@qsrecycling.com

I have tried using 2 separate SMTP plugins as well to try to fix my primary contact form both with “success” test messages sent but nothing in my inbox still if an email address is from a popular mail client.

Could someone please help me with this?

Thanks,
Bobby

#2

The From field needs to be an address from your domain, not someone else’s domain.

#3

this is such a silly problem to be dealing with, I changed the php mail header “from” pointing to myname@mydomain.com and now it’s working.

Thanks,
Bobby

#4

hmm…

not being able to spoof mail is a good thing. Would you really want someone to be able to send FROM your personal email address without logging in?

#5

Right.

When someone enters their email address on their contact form and pushes the button, the email they entered is not the sender of the message. (Depending on what they put in, the email they entered might not exist at all.) Your web site is what’s sending the email, so the headers of the email message it sends should tell the truth, by saying it’s “From:” your web site.

#6

[quote=“bpack14, post:3, topic:59953”]
this is such a silly problem to be dealing with, I changed the php mail header “from” pointing to myname@mydomain.com and now it’s working.[/quote]

Yes, and we all agree with you.

A contact form should not allow the error to occur in the first place - and the really unfortunate thing is that many of them are set up to send mail incorrectly by default. It’s a fundamental design flaw that indicates the script author has no understanding of the system that their program is reliant upon.

#7

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4021#section-2.1.2:

"Header Field: From

Description:
Mailbox of message author

Related information:
Specifies the author(s) of the message; that is, the mailbox(es)
of the person(s) or system(s) responsible for the writing of the
message. Defined as standard by RFC 822."

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4021#section-2.1.3:

"Header Field: Sender

Description:
Mailbox of message sender

Related information:
Specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual
transmission of the message. Defined as standard by RFC 822."

According to that, the ‘From’ field should be the mailbox of the author of the message, and the ‘Sender’ field should be the mailbox of the agent (in this case, a website) that is sending the mail.

See also, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322:

[quote] The “From:” field specifies the author(s) of the message,
that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible
for the writing of the message. The “Sender:” field specifies the
mailbox of the agent responsible for the actual transmission of the
message.[/quote]

If that’s right, then

is incorrect (though it might be what currently works best in practice).

#8

You’ve taken Andrew’s response out of context. I’ve highlighted the it to emphasize that the form is indeed lying and will try offer a brief explanation as to why.

The RFC defining the standard demands that the Sender field must be present if it isn’t the same entity as the From field. The reason for this demand is because the Sender must always be an authenticated entity (the “author” need not be). If both fields happen to be the same, then - and only then - may the Sender header be regarded as redundant and discarded.

As OP’s form is using only the From header, the result of relying solely on the “author” address is :

From: fakename@fakedomain.nowhere
Sender: fakename@fakedomain.nowhere

… and this is the resultant lie to which Andrew correctly refers.

#9

The point is that Andrew’s recommendation is not standards compliant. Given that the form is faulty, his recommendation may be the best one possible, short of changing the form script, but it is still incorrect. Assuming that I’ve understood the relevant part of the standard.

The correct approach (I think) in this kind of circumstance would be to change the form script so that it sends email with a ‘Sender’ field as well as a ‘From’ field, but that might be impractical when using off-the-shelf software.

The form, as currently scripted, is incapable of ‘telling the truth’.

#10

Setting the From field as recommended actually makes the form tell the truth by adhering strictly to the standard (Sender must be authenticated + if Sender=null, then Sender=From). It also has the benefit of being the path of least resistance when considering users who might be unable to code a solution for themselves and, like you suggest, need an “off the shelf” solution.

Absolutely. It’s unfortunate that there are oodles of scripts out there that need repairing.