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Author Topic: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?  (Read 12069 times)

Offline junkyard

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Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« on: December 20, 2013, 01:52:07 PM »
1. If so, will you as a new test customer (having a mailbox on Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail) receive the registration confirmation(welcome) email from your cart upon registration?
2. If received, did you see your store's name in the From: field of this email alright,  or that field was totally empty in inbox?
3. If the From: field was filled with your Cart's name/address correctly,  what is your Abantecart version (our's is 1.1.6)?

We're experiencing this exact problem:
 http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1322.new.html

Remarkably, the store's address and name are still shown correctly in From: of other SMTP notifications (like Order's) that are delivered just fine (registration emails won't make it to Google for instance, as Google rejects it completely),  suggesting there is a problem with one specific notification type only (registration confirmation).

Apparently, it can be repeated on any Abantecart installation that chose to use SMTP in System>Settings>Mail, would like to confirm on that.

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2014, 10:44:05 AM »
The issue's the same in the 1.1.7...  In the release notes for 1.1.8 we've seen the following bugfix in core:
"AMail lib fix related to unicode subject and sender name"
http://www.abantecart.com/shopping-cart-news/125-abantecart-new-version-118
Does the fix have anything to do with the bug discussed in this thread? 
Customers having "From:" header empty in their new registration confirmation email (sent via SMTP).

gordontaylor

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2014, 10:52:15 AM »
Hmmm interesting issue. Why would SMTP strip that field? I'm not using SMTP, but that is a good one to hunt down, I have added it to my list of things to research.

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2014, 11:22:47 AM »
What is really surprising is how few AbanteCart users seem to use SMTP php mailer, on reason unknown. Compared to the default Mail option (server's OS mailer), the cart's SMTP has clear advantages:
- the default server's Mail sends out the notifications on behalf of your ftpuser@servername address, disclosing that;
- SMTP sends all the notifications from your official cart's mailbox@domain.com instead;
- unlike Mail, your SMTP's mailbox service@domain.com will also receive incoming messages (replies back) from your consumers;
- default Mail option is much more likely to end up in consumer's mailbox Spam folder than the SMTP.
All except of this issue with Welcome emails.

gordontaylor

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2014, 12:50:28 PM »
One reason for the SMTP is that MANY hosting companies limit the amount of SMTP mail you can send, some even as little as 25 per day...to avoid people setting up spam machines, or so I'm told by my hosting company.

When I was using HostGator they limited you to 100 SMTP emails per day PERIOD, no matter what the reason.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2014, 01:51:10 PM by gordontaylor »

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2014, 01:53:12 PM »
One reason for the SMTP is that MANY hosting companies limit the amount of SMTP mail you can send, some even as little as 25 per day...to avoid people setting up spam machines, or so I'm told by my hosting company.

We always thought spammers are more likely to simply send via server's sendmail using the php mail() function (which is the default Abantecart "Mail" option) rather than do complex coding of opening sockets and posting SMTP commands;   but surely, they could exploit both  :(
Thinking about the 25 threshold a day, that would appear way too strict a requirement really, though many of our shops would probably easily fit even that :)   
FWIW, if your hoster sets one, it probably works via Sendmail/Exim/Qmail mailer settings, managed by hosting panels like these:
  http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/WHMDocs/MailLimitingFeatures
  http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/WHMDocs/PreventEmailAbuse
As you can see, that would be limiting both ways of sending,  Mail and SMTP ;  and a legitimate sender like e-commerce store owner can easily make a request to have their limit adjusted per their domain account, as this is not a rigid server-wide setting.

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #6 on: February 02, 2014, 02:05:05 PM »
When I was using HostGator they limited you to 100 SMTP emails per day PERIOD, no matter what the reason.

We heard of Host Gator as very aggressive hoster in many aspects; and those 100 emails a day would be limiting all your emails, no matter what setting you have in the cart, Mail or Smtp.    1 welcome email + 1 approval + 1 order notification + 1 status change + 1 something else = at minimum 5 emails per customer,  plus the admin herself doing a lot of testing   :D

gordontaylor

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2014, 02:19:36 PM »
correct, php and SMTP can be exploited and often are!

Still can't figure out why your SMTP is being cut off like that.

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2014, 03:05:40 PM »
Same here, all we could find was that welcome emails seem to originate from storefront/controller/pages/account/create.php  but there's a part that appears to be correct:
$mail->setFrom($this->config->get('store_main_email'));

There's also core/lib/mail.php that seems to control smtp having this code:
if ($this->verp) {
                                        fputs($handle, 'MAIL FROM: <' . $this->from . '>XVERP' . $this->crlf);
                                } else {
                                        fputs($handle, 'MAIL FROM: <' . $this->from . '>' . $this->crlf);
                                }
It also appears to be correct because the store's email is shown correctly in From: of other SMTP notifications (like Order's).
If there's a bug in the code related to Welcome emails only, it should be possible to reproduce it on the developers QA installations.

Offline jesus_automatic

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2014, 10:15:01 AM »
I have arrived at this point from another angle. I have been using MAIL to send messages to customers without problems. Until recently that is. I sent myself a test mail from the mail to customers form in admin. It didnt arrive. Subsequently I found that no mails to customers were arriving, though order confirmations to the store owner with addresses on the same damain as the store did arrive. I tracked the problem down to the sever host (webhosting buzz UK) blocking them as an anti spam measure. They said,

>>
From what we can see the email message has not been sent. This is the result of a recent ACL modification on the server hosting your account. One of its purposes is to block e-mails being sent from 'cPanelusername@serverhostname'. You can review more information on this implementation athttp://status.webhostingbuzz.com/index.php/2013/11/11/mail-service-configuration-alterations/

We were forced to implement these changes due to the recent increase of spam originating from compromised outdated CMS installations, from which mass spam is sent, resulting in blacklisting of the server's IP addresses in RBLs. To avoid these problems, you should reconfigure your contact form to perform a proper SMTP authentication, and sent emails from a valid email address that exists under your account.
To cut the long story short:
In order for a script to send mail successfully, the following requirements must be met:
- a valid email address, which exists on the server (i.e. in cPanel >> Email Accounts) must be used in the script's From field;
- proper SMTP authentication must be used by the script, using the aforementioned email account's login credentials for authenticating;
- domain must be using our server for its mail and the script must localhost as the mail server.
<<

I don't know if these sort of measures are being used by other hosting companies but the simple answer seemed to be to use smtp. And that brought me here.
Does anyone have this figured out?
Is there anyway to get the MAIL function to send from a real email account rather than username@serverhostname?

Offline junkyard

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Re: Does anyone else use the cart's SMTP mailer?
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2014, 10:34:05 AM »
Quote
Is there anyway to get the MAIL function to send from a real email account rather than username@serverhostname?

Yes, just switch to SMTP in Abantecart's  System>Settings>Mail and specify your real email account credentials there.
It works well -- on except of the issue with new registration confirmation emails discussed in this thread.

 

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