Iām not getting my comments emailed to me any more. I use WordPress 2.5.1 I still get emails that I have comments pending. Iām not sure when this stopped. What should I check?
This question was submitted on AskOwen by Connie who runs BrainFoggles and judging by the questions on the WordPress forums, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated issue. Unfortunately, I think there are probably a number of probable causes for this issue and just like termites in your home furniture, if you don’t notice the problem straight away, it just gets worse and worse; but I’ll go into a couple of things to watch out for and a way you can explicitly cure the problem.
First of all, what can stop automated mail from being sent to you? Well, one factor that can contribute to this is the anti-spam measures that your hosting provider implements. There has been a move in the last few months to try and reduce spam by ensuring that the email they send only comes from legitimate accounts on their system. Now, since WordPress 2.3.1, there are cases when WordPress sends email originating from “wordpress@yourdomain.com”. If this account doesn’t exist on your host, then this email will get blocked by your provider. To address this, create an account on your mail server using the account name of “wordpress” (thus creating an account “wordpress@yourdomain.com”) and forward this to your usual mail account.
It’s also possible that some plugins send email from the Administration email account in WordPress (the one under Settings -> General Settings), so make sure that this is one your host recognises. If you prefer using your Gmail account for example, set up a local email address and forward that to your Gmail account, then configure WordPress to send to the local account.
If you’re *still* having problems, there’s a little WordPress plugin called Comments Notifier that can be quite useful. This enables you to send notification of comments to multiple email addresses. It might just solve your problems.
Good luck, and let us know if this solves your problem.
Hi Owen, long time no cross-cyber paths š
Anyway to get back on topic, another symptom resulting from the ‘no wordpress@yourdomain.com account configured’ issue is when your comment notifications do arrive, but appear to come from “box251.bluehost.com” (as an example).
Occasionally you’ll also find some plugins attempt to send from other accounts, so it may be worth scanning through the code to check if you need to create another @yourdomain.com e-mail account, on top of wordpress@yourdomain.com
Finally, any chance you’ll install a subscribe to comments type plugin? I’m truly awful at checking back on posts I’ve left witterings on…
@ChrisM: Thanks for the pointer, and for popping by.
I’ve added the “Subscribe to Comments Plugin”
Enjoy š
Thank you, that was impressively quick!
*chuckle* .. I aim to please š
There are so many things that can go wrong it can drive you crazy. Email problems are some of the worst problems that my business has encountered.