Password recovery is broken

  • I recently started to get complaints from the students on my Mandarin class website. They were unable to obtain a new password. The problem is that after clicking “Lost your password”, students fill out the get new password form and, after completing a captcha challenge, are met with an error message.

    The email could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function.

    In an attempt to debug this issue, I restored a previous working version of my website to an older version of wordpress found that there was no problem with this feature. So then I updated all the plugins, and still no problems.

    Finally, I updated to wordpress 4.4.1 and tried again. The “email could not be sent” message returned.

    Just to be sure, I repeated the experiment with a slightly different twist. This time I restored the same backup on a different subdomain with wordpress 4.3, verified that there were no issues with password recovery, and then (without updating any plugins) upgraded to 4.4.1.

    Again … the password recovery was broken.

    I think this proves conclusively that there is some problem with the latest release. Hope someone can help with this. It is truly annoying to be always manually passwords.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    I think the error you received is right, your host may have disabled the mail() function, or at least the way the current version of WordPress interacts with it.

    This is not a WordPress problem, it’s a hosting provider problem.

    Try https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/postman-smtp/ which will allow WordPress to use your email’s outgoing server instead.

    Thread Starter mirgcire

    (@mirgcire)

    Hi James Huff, I appreciate the prompt response and I will follow your suggestion. But …

    I have contacted the host (Bluehost) three times in the last 5 days, to no avail. I have been using this site on this host for 2.5 years. This is the first time this problem has arisen … and it is specific to 4.4 and 4.4.1.

    It seems obvious that something changed in 4.4 to trigger this situation. Can you elaborate on why you think it is not a WP issue.

    Thanks

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Mostly just 12 years of experience that, when this happens, it’s the hosting provider disabling or limiting PHP’s mail() function on the server (a common tactic on shared servers to stop outgoing email spam).

    That, and absolutely none of my 4.4.1 sites have this problem.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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