Forums

Error occurs using dynamic to sender in certain cases

midnight-sun 22 Jul, 2015
Hi all

First of all, thank you for all the tipps here. Now to my small problem with big impact.

I'am using a simple contact form with the only specialty of "dynamic copy to sender" and this causes - sometimes - the famous
Error: "Could not instantiate mail function".

When I first tested my form - can be seen here: http://www.baettwil.ch/kontakt/kontaktformular/ - it worked just fine. But when I proudly presented the new form (after migrating from joomla 2.5.28 to 3.4.3) created with chronoforms V5 to my daughter an my husband, they told me, that there was the above error message (above the Thank you for... message).
First reaction: unbelievable, as I have tested it from beginning to end and backwards. So I asked several friends to test the form, some of them reported success, others sent me screeshots with the error message.

Finally, and after having used my gmail-adress for testing, too, I noticed, that the error messag appears only, when the sender e-mail address was one of the big @gmail.com or @hotmail.com (nobody could test with yahoo or aol).

Important to say, that all the sent off forms arrive where they should (at the to-Adress, which is not dynamic to). Only the copy to self never goes through to a gmail, hotmail (and perhaps others) account.
If I use a a sender adress of a smaller provider as @bluewin.ch, @sunrise.ch or even the one @my_own_domain.ch, both messages pass through without any problem.

Joomla also sends the system e-mails and the links (email) to an article.

In my perception, many people use gmail / hotmail and other free e-mail-adresses. This is why I had to delete the "copy to self" function. If I want, that everybody can re-read or print the sent form, I will have to implement a print button as described here: http://www.chronoengine.com/faqs/2652-how-can-i-add-a-print-button-to-my-form

Settings in Joomla = SMTP (is a must, hoster), for the rest I tried out every combination, with or without authentification, with or without ssl, port 25 or 465 and so on ...

I would appreciate any ideas how to solve this. Thanks in advance
GreyHead 22 Jul, 2015
Hi midnight-sun,

Please change the From Email address so that it matches the domain name. Do not use a Dynamic From Email address as it causes exactly the problems you describe.

Bob
midnight-sun 22 Jul, 2015
Dear GreyHead

The From is not dynamic, as you can see in the attached screenshot. And it is exactly the same as in the configuration of joomla.

Any other idea for a solution would be appreciated.
GreyHead 23 Jul, 2015
Answer
Hi midnight-sun,

I can only suggest that you check with your web host / mail service provider. There is nothing in ChronoForms that will treat emails differently depending on the To Domain.

Please take a Form Backup using the icon in the Forms Manager and post it here or PM or email it to me and I'll take a closer look.

Bob
midnight-sun 25 Jul, 2015
1 Likes
Sometimes, the best thing to do is to do nothing ...
After having tested the form at least 30 times with debugger, xx different settings, and always the same error (second email could NOT be delivered), I decided to paint our fence (really).
All done, I made a turn here and saw your last answer and wanted to send you the code of the debugger.

Miracles happen, the error has vanished. Although this isn't a current case, it might be interresting to know why. I assume ...

The web host and the mail service provider are not the same (I can't change this). In FROM I have to use a fix email adress (mail service provider). The web host of my Joomla (in fact Joomla of village administration) cares a lot about security. If you want to send emails from an address of which they are not the mail service provider, you have to authenticate the FROM address and to use a special server explicitly provided for these cases.
I had authenticated the FROM email several days ago, the system emails and "mail to a friend" of an article worked, so the settings in J backend were ok. It seems that it just lasted a little longer to "machine-approve" the same thing coming from a contact form (night information processing of web host).
And really, the web host must have different settings for xxx@xxx.ch and xxx@gmail/hotmail.com (and others perhaps).

Thank you and kind regards, midnight-sun
This topic is locked and no more replies can be posted.