Am not receiving email notifications of comments

It sounds like your hosting provider has disabled PHP’s mail() function, which is used by WordPress to send you comment notifications.

This is a common safeguard employed by hosting providers when they suspect that another customer on the same server is sending spam emails directly from the server.

Another alternative is that PHP’s mail() function is still active, but spammer activity from the server has already caused any email sent from it to be blacklisted. This would result in the emails being sent, but never received by any email address with basic anti-spam capabilities.

You can check this by leaving a comment on your site and checking if you receive an email. Another alternative would be to use the Check Email plugin and sending yourself a test email to see if it works.

If you didn’t receive a test email, you could try using a plugin like Postman SMTP to configure your WordPress site to use your email’s outgoing mail server instead of PHP’s mail() function.

You may want to check with your host to see if you have PHP mail enabled – some hosts (like mine) turn it off as a spam email deterrent. The solution for me was the WP-Mail-SMTP plugin.

Most of the comments are spam, it’s true.
I was hoping not to have to use a plugin, but perhaps that’s what I’ll do. I did do many test runs with various settings and none came through.
Thank you

RESULT: Plugged in WP-Mail-SMTP.
Ran test–>bugs

Test Message Sent
The result was:
bool(false)
The full debugging output is shown below:
object(PHPMailer)#1162 (75) {
[“Version”]=>
string(6) “5.2.14”
[“Priority”]=>
NULL
[“CharSet”]=>
string(5) “UTF-8”
[“ContentType”]=>
string(10) “text/plain”
[“Encoding”]=>
string(4) “8bit”
[“ErrorInfo”]=>
string(82) “SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting”
[“From”]=>
string(22) “[email removed from public forum]”
[“FromName”]=>
string(34) “210 Restaurant & Live Music Lounge”
[“Sender”]=>
string(0) “”
[“ReturnPath”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Subject”]=>
string(50) “WP Mail SMTP: Test mail to [email removed from public forum]”
[“Body”]=>
string(68) “This is a test email generated by the WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin.”
[“AltBody”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Ical”]=>
string(0) “”
[“MIMEBody”:protected]=>
string(69) “This is a test email generated by the WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin.
”
[“MIMEHeader”:protected]=>
string(416) “Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2016 06:46:44 +0000
To: [email removed from public forum]
From: 210 Restaurant & Live Music Lounge
Subject: WP Mail SMTP: Test mail to [email removed from public forum]
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.14 (https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

”
[“mailHeader”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
[“WordWrap”]=>
int(0)
[“Mailer”]=>
string(4) “smtp”
[“Sendmail”]=>
string(18) “/usr/sbin/sendmail”
[“UseSendmailOptions”]=>
bool(true)
[“PluginDir”]=>
string(0) “”
[“ConfirmReadingTo”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Hostname”]=>
string(0) “”
[“MessageID”]=>
string(0) “”
[“MessageDate”]=>
string(31) “Sun, 13 Nov 2016 06:46:44 +0000”
[“Host”]=>
string(9) “localhost”
[“Port”]=>
string(2) “25”
[“Helo”]=>
string(0) “”
[“SMTPSecure”]=>
string(3) “ssl”
[“SMTPAutoTLS”]=>
bool(true)
[“SMTPAuth”]=>
bool(false)
[“SMTPOptions”]=>
array(0) {
}
[“Username”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Password”]=>
string(0) “”
[“AuthType”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Realm”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Workstation”]=>
string(0) “”
[“Timeout”]=>
int(300)
[“SMTPDebug”]=>
bool(true)
[“Debugoutput”]=>
string(4) “echo”
[“SMTPKeepAlive”]=>
bool(false)
[“SingleTo”]=>
bool(false)
[“SingleToArray”]=>
array(0) {
}
[“do_verp”]=>
bool(false)
[“AllowEmpty”]=>
bool(false)
[“LE”]=>
string(1) ”
”
[“DKIM_selector”]=>
string(0) “”
[“DKIM_identity”]=>
string(0) “”
[“DKIM_passphrase”]=>
string(0) “”
[“DKIM_domain”]=>
string(0) “”
[“DKIM_private”]=>
string(0) “”
[“action_function”]=>
string(0) “”
[“XMailer”]=>
string(0) “”
[“smtp”:protected]=>
object(SMTP)#1163 (13) {
[“Version”]=>
string(6) “5.2.14”
[“SMTP_PORT”]=>
int(25)
[“CRLF”]=>
string(2) ”
”
[“do_debug”]=>
bool(true)
[“Debugoutput”]=>
string(4) “echo”
[“do_verp”]=>
bool(false)
[“Timeout”]=>
int(300)
[“Timelimit”]=>
int(300)
[“smtp_conn”:protected]=>
bool(false)
[“error”:protected]=>
array(4) {
[“error”]=>
string(0) “”
[“detail”]=>
string(0) “”
[“smtp_code”]=>
string(0) “”
[“smtp_code_ex”]=>
string(0) “”
}
[“helo_rply”:protected]=>
NULL
[“server_caps”:protected]=>
NULL
[“last_reply”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
}
[“to”:protected]=>
array(1) {
[0]=>
array(2) {
[0]=>
string(23) “[email removed from public forum]”
[1]=>
string(0) “”
}
}
[“cc”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“bcc”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“ReplyTo”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“all_recipients”:protected]=>
array(1) {
[“[email removed from public forum]”]=>
bool(true)
}
[“RecipientsQueue”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“ReplyToQueue”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“attachment”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“CustomHeader”:protected]=>
array(0) {
}
[“lastMessageID”:protected]=>
string(52) “<[email protected]>”
[“message_type”:protected]=>
string(5) “plain”
[“boundary”:protected]=>
array(3) {
[1]=>
string(35) “b1_003498cf8cad387051d2bd64f228df9b”
[2]=>
string(35) “b2_003498cf8cad387051d2bd64f228df9b”
[3]=>
string(35) “b3_003498cf8cad387051d2bd64f228df9b”
}
[“language”:protected]=>
array(19) {
[“authenticate”]=>
string(35) “SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.”
[“connect_host”]=>
string(43) “SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host.”
[“data_not_accepted”]=>
string(30) “SMTP Error: data not accepted.”
[“empty_message”]=>
string(18) “Message body empty”
[“encoding”]=>
string(18) “Unknown encoding: ”
[“execute”]=>
string(19) “Could not execute: ”
[“file_access”]=>
string(23) “Could not access file: ”
[“file_open”]=>
string(33) “File Error: Could not open file: ”
[“from_failed”]=>
string(35) “The following From address failed: ”
[“instantiate”]=>
string(36) “Could not instantiate mail function.”
[“invalid_address”]=>
string(17) “Invalid address: ”
[“mailer_not_supported”]=>
string(25) ” mailer is not supported.”
[“provide_address”]=>
string(54) “You must provide at least one recipient email address.”
[“recipients_failed”]=>
string(45) “SMTP Error: The following recipients failed: ”
[“signing”]=>
string(15) “Signing Error: ”
[“smtp_connect_failed”]=>
string(22) “SMTP connect() failed.”
[“smtp_error”]=>
string(19) “SMTP server error: ”
[“variable_set”]=>
string(30) “Cannot set or reset variable: ”
[“extension_missing”]=>
string(19) “Extension missing: ”
}
[“error_count”:protected]=>
int(2)
[“sign_cert_file”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
[“sign_key_file”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
[“sign_extracerts_file”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
[“sign_key_pass”:protected]=>
string(0) “”
[“exceptions”:protected]=>
bool(true)
[“uniqueid”:protected]=>
string(32) “003498cf8cad387051d2bd64f228df9b”
}
The SMTP debugging output is shown below:
2016-11-13 06:46:44 Connection: opening to ssl://localhost:25, timeout=300, options=array (
)
2016-11-13 06:46:44 SMTP ERROR: Failed to connect to server: (0)
2016-11-13 06:46:44 SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting
From Email
[email removed from public forum]
You can specify the email address that emails should be sent from. If you leave this blank, the default email will be used.
From Name
210 Restaurant & Live Music Lounge
You can specify the name that emails should be sent from. If you leave this blank, the emails will be sent from WordPress.
Mailer Mailer
Send all WordPress emails via SMTP.
Use the PHP mail() function to send emails.
Return Path Return Path Set the return-path to match the From Email
SMTP Options

These options only apply if you have chosen to send mail by SMTP above.

SMTP Host
localhost
SMTP Port
25
Encryption Encryption No encryption.
Use SSL encryption.
Use TLS encryption. This is not the same as STARTTLS. For most servers SSL is the recommended option.
Authentication No: Do not use SMTP authentication.
Yes: Use SMTP authentication.
If this is set to no, the values below are ignored.
Username
Password

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by James Huff. Reason: email removed from public forum

I recommend reporting that at https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/wp-mail-smtp so the plugin’s developers and support community can help you with this. (if you do post the same debug info over there, make sure to remove your email address from it, as these are public forums)

Or, try a different plugin, like https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/postman-smtp/

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by James Huff.