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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 11:01 am
The e-mail confirmation has been working great until yesterday. Usually, the enrollee receives an e-mail confirmation and I receive a notification that they have enrolled. I have 8 enrollees in an event, all of whom received their confirmation and for which I was notified. Two more tried to register for the same event last night and they did not receive confirmation, nor did I.
I then went in and registered myself this morning and I did not receive confirmation. In General Settings “Default Regular Confirmation Email” is checked Yes, and in the Event Overview the Email Confirmation is checked Yes (I don’t know the difference between the two so I keep them both filled in with the same response and checked Yes). My event e-mail is correct also in General Settings.
Finally, the two enrollees from last night, and myself, all show up as attendee’s – it’s just that no body is getting their e-mails.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 11:02 am
It just occurred to me, these are the first two people who have tried to enroll since I updated to the latest version of EE3. Could that have something to do with it?
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 11:14 am
Hi Stephen,
Updating to the latest version shouldn’t cause the problem. Did you happen to update any other plugins, or your theme perhaps?
Also, I’ve had success using WP Mandrill to send emails from WordPress. The WP Mandrill plugin uses Mandrill API to send outgoing emails, with or without attachments, from your WordPress installation. It replaces the wp_mail function included with WordPress.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 11:24 am
Thank you for your fast response. No, I have not updated anything else recently.
As I mentioned, it worked fine before. I have received notifications at this e-mail address everytime someone registered. I received none for the two last night, nor for myself this morning.
I have tested the system before and received the confirmation e-mail. So this has just started.
As I understand it you are recommending I download a seperate plug-in for this function, even though this has been working well until now? How does the new plug-in integrate with EE3?
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 11:29 am
BTW, I have a dental appointment in 30 minutes so if you don’t hear from me for a few hours it’s not because I don’t need to get this resolved! Thank you.
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 11:34 am
Hi Stephen,
There are many things that could cause the wp_mail function to stop working in WordPress. I recommended using WP Mandrill simply because it has fixed lots of customers’ issues with sending mail from WordPress (not just in EE). WP Mandrill doesn’t integrated directly with EE. It just takes over the mail sending functionality and makes it more reliable. It also will show you what happens when/if an email bounces or is blocked by an email server.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 2:42 pm
Sorry for the delay. Thank you for the suggestion. WP Mandrill may be a fall-back position but it begs the issue of what is malfunctioning in EE3 that worked before.
The critical thing here is that for the past two or more years I have used EE I have always received notification when someone signed up for a workshop – suddenly I am not receiving the notifications. Perhaps I have inadvertently changed a setting and don’t know where to look? The point is, this is a feature that should work, and has worked satisfactorily, and I would like for it to function again. Nothing in the interface has changed that I can see. So where do we begin to find out what has happened?
BTW, I run small workshops and registrations trickle in one to two at a time over a period of 5-6 months. It does not help to have to go online and check every day or two on the chance that someone has registered and not received a confirmation e-mail that then has to be sent manually.
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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April 6, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Hi Stephen, Event Espresso uses a native WordPress function called wp_mail() which uses the local mail server to send out emails. Event Espresso itself does not send those emails.
You may not have changed anything but your web host may have which could explain why it worked fine and suddenly stopped. We regularly recommend transactional email services like Mandrill and Postmark.
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/postmark-app-mandrill-transactional-email-handling-services/
Try one of those and let us know if the issue continues.
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Lorenzo
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 3:13 pm
Greetings, Lorenzo, I appreciate you two trying to help me with this. However, this does not get us any closer to a solution. I can assure you my web host, lunarpages, has not made any changes to their site. Had they I would have been notified. As I explained in my last e-mail I run small workshops and registrations trickle in one to two at a time over a period of 5-6 months. It does not help to have to go online and check every day or two on the chance that someone has registered and not received a confirmation e-mail that then has to be sent manually.
If, as you say, EE uses wp_mail() and for the last two years it has worked perfectly, and only since the EE3 upgrade has a problem arisen, the question is, what can be done on your end to help me trouble shoot this, not change to a program I have to constantly monitor when I am accustomed to EE working properly?
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 3:18 pm
I just took a look at the Mandrill link you sent. Without going further I am assuming this is a product I would need to purchase and license. The concern is that I am paying a yearly subscription fee to EE for a function that suddenly stopped working and am being told to go elsewhere to fix it. If the function is included in your program then shouldn’t it work? If you would like for me to make a tech support call to lunarpages to find out if they disabled a function without informing me I will do so, but I will not appreciate the time I have to wait to verify that they don’t even know the function exists.
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Lorenzo Orlando Caum
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April 6, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Hi Stephen, the reason why I mentioned that is we have seen this occur with some web hosts (i.e. unexpected changes without notifying the customer). I’m not saying that this happened here but this is something that we see in our support forums at least once a month.
I would not have made a recommendation for a transactional email service if I didn’t think it could help solve the issue.
We haven’t made any changes to how Event Espresso uses wp_mail() in the recent maintenance releases for Event Espresso 3. One possibility is if you upgraded from a very old version of the software (e.g your last update was a couple years ago). If that is the case, then there could be some other issues at play here.
What version were you using prior to the update?
Also, so we have ruled this out, is anything in your SPAM or Junk email folders?
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Lorenzo
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 3:30 pm
Hi Stephen,
I also wanted to mention that the Mandrill service is free for up to 12K emails per month. Unless you go over 12,000 emails in a single month, you will not be charged.
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Josh
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April 6, 2015 at 3:46 pm
I just took a look at the Mandrill link you sent. Without going further I am assuming this is a product I would need to purchase and license.
No need to purchase a license, it’s free for up to 12000 emails per month.
The concern is that I am paying a yearly subscription fee to EE for a function that suddenly stopped working and am being told to go elsewhere to fix it. If the function is included in your program then shouldn’t it work?
Event Espresso does not include the built in mail server on your server. Event Espresso only builds the email, and your server’s email server sends it. Built in mail servers as part of a hosting package have been found to be less reliable compared to the dedicated mail servers maintained by transaction email services like Mandrill and Postmark.
If you would like for me to make a tech support call to lunarpages to find out if they disabled a function without informing me I will do so, but I will not appreciate the time I have to wait to verify that they don’t even know the function exists.
They did not necessarily disable anything. There are many things that can happen (and go wrong) between an email server and an email client, and the email transactional services like Mandrill and Postmarkapp are recommended because they provide more reliable transactional email delivery, compared to using a hosting plans built in mail server.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for that, Josh. So, EE simply “plugs in” to the wp mail server and if that is not functioning EE can’t send e-mails. It appears there is no solution on your end which means regularly checking my WP account to see if anyone signed up that day then manually generating a confirmation e-mail using wpMandrill. Somehow I was hoping you guys would know how to get EE to function as it has in the past.
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 4:00 pm
Hi Stephen,
There may be a misunderstanding. Unless you wanted to, you wouldn’t have to check your WordPress dashboard everyday for registrations that weren’t sent notifications. WP Mandrill is not a manual service that you send emails through if you see that one has failed. In other words, once it is setup, it is automatic. Mandrill (or postmark) automatically takes over the email sending functionality, and sends the emails through their mail servers instead of your host’s. You can also check your Mandrill dashboard to see if/when emails fail. You can also set alerts to notify you when/if an email bounces/fails.
Does that make more sense?
Personal note: I have been using Mandrill on a personal site for a few weeks now, and have had no failed emails since I set it up. Whereas, before installing WP Mandrill, I would have several failed emails a day.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:05 pm
I’m beginning to feel better about this, Jonathan, :-). First there was a misunderstanding. I thought Mandrill was manual. So, if Mandrill is activated on my site, which it now is along with an API key, then when someone registers for a workshop Mandrill will know to send them a confirmation from the EE site, correct? I don’t have to do anything? And will Mandrill send me notification that they have registered?
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Josh
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April 6, 2015 at 4:14 pm
Stephen,
Mandrill is a replacement for your server’s built in mail server. So instead of (1) EE building an email, (2) then sending the email to wp_mail(), which then (3) hands the email off to your server’s built in mail server, the last step (3) changes to handing the email off to Mandrill’s email servers. Steps 1 and 2 stay the same.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:17 pm
FYI, I have installed Mandrill and successfully sent a test e-mail to myself using the Mandrill interface. I then registered myself on my site using EE but no e-mail was sent or received confirming registration.
At the bottom of the Mandril support page it reads:
“If you are a Plugin Developer and you need to create a deep integration between Mandrill and your WordPress installation, wpMandrill will make your life easier.”
And then goes on to provide links and other information I do not understand. Have you guys integrated this into EE?
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:21 pm
BTW, when I registered myself using EE from my site, the registration appeared immediately in the Attendee section of the Event.
1. I just did not receive a confirmation that I was registered, and
2. I did not receive a notice that someone new had registered.
I can’t help but thinking that I have not configured EE correctly.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:26 pm
I just checked my settings in the Event Overview. At the bottom is a check box for categories. Three times today I have checked the category “Workhops” and each time when I update the Overview the check goes away. This may (or may not) indicate a larger problem either in EE or WP.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:29 pm
I hate to suggest this, but is there any chance that if I delete this event and recreate it it will function properly? I hesitate because I already had to delete it once as the first listing had an accent over one of the letters. All the attendees received a second confirmation notice when I manually reentered their names – I hate to go through with that again.
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 4:31 pm
Hi Stephen,
Now that you have sent a test, and tested a registration, you should have 2 emails sent through Mandrill; or atleast one, the test registration. Can you log into your Mandrill dashboard, and click on Outbound on the left column? That will list the emails that were sent (or processed) through Mandrill. There should be information there stating whether it bounced or was sent successfully. Under the Status column, you can click on Delivered, Rejected, Soft-bounce, etc., which will give you the status reason. This will help us troublshoot further.
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 4:33 pm
I hate to suggest this, but is there any chance that if I delete this event and recreate it it will function properly? I hesitate because I already had to delete it once as the first listing had an accent over one of the letters. All the attendees received a second confirmation notice when I manually reentered their names – I hate to go through with that again.
I don’t recommend this, because the issue is not likely with that one event.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:37 pm
In the Outbound page it says one sent, one delivered, and it is my test e-mail. It does not indicate the additional two, one to me and one to the Attendee (which is also me).
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 6, 2015 at 4:42 pm
Okay, did you set up WP Mandrill in your WP dashboard? You will need to configure it under Settings > Mandrill.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:44 pm
I did that first of all. It is at the bottom of that page that you are able to send a test e-mail from Mandrill. I am assuming that Mandrill is correctly configured or it would not have sent the test.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:47 pm
I did not enable “track opens” or “track clicks”, there are no templates found, and I did not check “Replace all line feeds (“\n”) by <br/> in the message body?” Otherwise everything is filled in.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 6, 2015 at 4:48 pm
I have a 4pm meeting at school and it is 3:47pm PST here. Fortunately, the U is only two blocks away. 🙂 I will need to resume this tomorrow and would like all of you to know I appreciate your putting up with this.
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Tony
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April 7, 2015 at 10:11 am
Hi Stephen,
I’ve been looking over your site and it appears Event Espresso has been incorrectly configured.
As you have not previously posted any links to your site, are you wanting to keep those private? (We don’t post links without asking unless you have done so yourself in the thread)
It appears your main registration page (which should contain the [ESPRESSO_EVENTS] shortcode) has been set to use the [SINGLE_EVENT] shortcode.
If you go to Event Espresso -> General Setting -> Page Settings -> Main registration page. What is that set to?
I tried to place a test registration on your site and could only input my registration details, no payment options and I could not reach the thank-you page. The thank-you page is where the emails are triggered, so its expected you would not receive emails if you can’t reach that page.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 7, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Tony, thank you for checking. I see you are registered to go with me to Cuba this year. 🙂
It is the short code, [SINGLEEVENT single_event_id=”havana-santiago-de-cuba-and-oriente-1-55130bbfdac41″].
The Main Registration Page is set to Cuba Registration.
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Stephen Anchell
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April 7, 2015 at 1:23 pm
Hey, Tony, Lorenzo, Jonathan, & Josh.
Tony is a genius. It was the shortlink code. I changed to [ESPRESSO_EVENTS] and it works like a champ. It was so simple no body else thought about it.
Thank you.
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Jonathan Wilson
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April 7, 2015 at 1:25 pm
Wow! Glad you got it worked out!
Let us know if we can do anything else for you.
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