Subject line UTF-8 encoding

Hi @kbaldac, thanks for reaching out.

When enabling the UTF-8 subject line, the plugin encodes it with quoted-printable encoding – the ‘garbage full of question marks’. For some reason the email clients you’re working with aren’t recognizing it and displaying the un-decoded string.

Can you please let me know on which email clients you’re seeing the question-marks-strings?

@vinny

i have the same issue here since about 22nd Aug
using Thunderbird 68.12.0

worked all fine for years until (roughly) that date

Plugins/Theme/WP are all up to date..

Hi @ollybach,

Can you send me a copy (in .eml format so I get the headers) of a message where that happened? You can send it to the email address found in the Support tab.

Cheers,
Vinny

I cant really see any email address in the support tab …?! (or maybe i’m blind…)

in any event, the issue seems to be fixed – for now at least – if i do NOT enable “Subject Line Encoding” so I guess I’m ok with it as it is now
(though still a bit puzzled this should now be switched off to work….)

i’ve uploaded an .eml -> .zip here for you to download if you want to investigate further though.
https://downloads.wp-pizza.com/encoded-subjectline.zip

(FYI: i’ve replaced the domain portions in it to something like domain.abc and email.xyz etc as this file is now publicly available for a bit)

Got it, thanks. Feel free to delete the file.

As for disabling the UTF-8 option, that’ll cause your messages to have some entities in place of characters like the long dash.

I’ll let you know what I find.

>free to delete the file.
thanks

> some entities in place
i can live with either – just would be cool to get this not happening one day. no particular rush my end

cheers

Apologies! My follow-up notifications were going to the new webmaster and I didn’t get them. We found there were differences in our web team because one person was using eM Client which worked with UTF-8 turned on. I use BT Mail and get ‘garbage’ with UTF-8 turned on. We also checked GMail which doesn’t work with UTF-8 turned on.

When UTF-8 is turned off, the only problems we’re aware of are special characters (as you described above). Do you still need examples? I believe it’s displaying the html codes for the special characters.

Hi @kbaldac,

Because I cannot replicate the issue myself, I’m wondering if you’d mind trying 2 different things and letting me know if they work (and which one).

In file bbpress-notify-nospam/includes/controller/common_core.class.php, line 1193 you’ll find the following:

$filtered_subject = substr( $filtered_subject, strlen( 'Subject:' ) );

Please change it to

$filtered_subject = substr( $filtered_subject, strlen( 'Subject: ' ) );

The difference is an extra space after ‘Subject:’.

If that still doesn’t work, please try commenting it out altogether

// $filtered_subject = substr( $filtered_subject, strlen( 'Subject: ' ) );

Let me know how it goes and I’ll commit the fix.

Cheers,
Vinny

Unfortunately neither of these changes seemed to make any difference to the problem we have when double quotes are used as topic titles (UTF code is off)

Example Notification: re: Testing “GD bbPress Toolbox Pro&#8221

our topic is “Testing GD bbPress Toolbox”

Karen ( pro Kim)

Sorry, I missed being explicit in that sense – the changes I suggested are for making it work with UTF-8 turned on. Please turn on UTF-8 Subject lines settings in the General screen of bbpnns and try again.

Unforunately I got form teh second suggestion (commented out)
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Notification:=20=20re:=20Testing=20=E2=80=9CGD=20bbPres?= =?UTF-8?Q?s=20Toolbox=20Pro=E2=80=9D?=

First suggestion was the same except that it omitted Subject

Karen

Thanks for trying those out. I’ll find a different solution and will keep you posted.

PS My own mailbox is gmail (sorry about typos)
Karen

I’ve read somewhere just now that the outgoing mail server may be the cause of it (I use G Suite but don’t get those errors, and my messages go through Mailgun).

What do you use for your mail system? If it’s your host, can you find out what Operating system the mailer is running on? The more information I get, the closer I’ll get to finding a solution.

Cheers,
Vinny

Just a thought. I’ve been following this a bit. I had similar problems a while back. Following the “utf” instructions helped but then it returned depending on the email client I was viewing. Also my moderators were variable, most not seeing it, but others that did.

I eventually came to my own conclusion that it had something to do with the default WordPress email handler. (Which was also causing Bluehost grief.)

I did install and set up Postman SMTP on my site. Not an easy task with Bluehost, but eventually got it right. That helped significantly.

I no longer see the utf surrounding the email subjects. So I think it’s a combination of Bluehost issues and email client issues. I most often saw it in my EarthLink webmail and sometimes in Thunderbird. My moderator in Australia on a web only email client on her iPad never saw it.