Formmail email has no timestamp

[lucieb]

Hi,

My form is working fine, but recently it began sending the email with no timestamp on submit, and I can't figure out why. It used to work just fine and the registration forms would come in by email with a timestamp. The error massages that I get when a person makes an entry error on the form is still timestamped.

I didn't change anything in my form so I don't see why it would suddenly change the way it sends things. Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone ever had this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Lucie

[crabtree]

it sounds like ur hosting provider changed something

is it the time in the header of all emails that's missing, or a fields u specially added to ur form to record the time?

[lucieb]

Hi Crabtree,

It is only the emails that come from my form that do not have the timestamp on it. I don<t receive the form, one of my colleagues does, but she says that all her other emails are fine. Only the registration forms that come out of my form are being sent with no timestamp. It is nothing that I set in my form.

I will actually go into the form today and add myself as a recipient to to some tests and see what I receive through the form process. I also suspect that it might be something that my hosting provider changed, but I don't understand why it would only affect some of my colleagues emails.

I will write here again if I find out anything new. Thanks for you attempt to help.

Lucie

[lucieb]

I did some more testing today and things get even more bizarre. If my form sends an email to an email address that has a physical mailbox, there is no timestamp on the email. If the form sends an email to an email address which has a mail forward or a mail alias but does not have a physical mailbox created, the email has a timestamp.

I am gathering various examples of the situations to send to my email hosting service to see if they can help, but in the meantime, does anyone know why the timestamp would be working for forwards but not for emails with a mailbox associated?

Thanks,

Lucie

[crabtree]

forwards are re-transmissions from a different server (typically)

all the evidence points to one conclusion: ur hosting provider has changed the email sending system and it no longer adds timestamps

[lucieb]

Thanks again for your help on this. I have sent a support email to my host provider and am waiting for the reply. Hopefully they can fix the problem. It kind of helps to know when a person put in a registration form when we want to communicate back with them.

[lucieb]

My email host finally got back to me after doing tests on his end and he can't find what is causing this. He says he has not changed anything in the email server. Is it possible that something was changed within formmail that would cause the timestamp to be dropped? I told him that I doubted that when he asked the question, but I am asking it here just the same.

I don't get how everything used to work fine, I changed nothing, he claims he changed nothing, and now it doesn't work anymore.

For now, as a temporary fix, I have removed the mailbox from the email address that receives my forms and forwarded it to the personal email of the person who used to own the mailbox, but it would be really nice to find out what is really causing the problem and fix it.

Any comments?

Thanks,

Lucie

[russellr]

Hi,

Crabtree's analysis is right I think.

So, the only question I would have is whether the problem is on the sending side or the receiving side of the email.

One easy way to determine this is to create a second email account (I recommend gmail.com) and then include that email address in the "recipients" field and FormMail's TARGET_EMAIL setting.

If neither address gets the timestamp, then the problem is almost certainly on the sending side.

If one address gets the timestamp and the other doesn't then the problem is on the receiving side of the one that doesn't get it.

If it's on the sending side, the problem really cannot be FormMail because FormMail doesn't add the timestamp at all. It's the responsibility of the sending server to add this, not the application program (in this case FormMail) that requests the mail to be sent.

Of course, if your host cared enough about the problem (given you actually pay them every month for a service, you would think they should care), they would write a simple PHP script to prove that they don't have a problem.

These free test scripts make it really easy for them:

http://www.tectite.com/vbforums/show...rver-send-mail

Feel free to point your host to this post if you think it might shame them into doing their job (i.e. providing proper support for a service you pay for!)

[lucieb]

Hi Russell,

Thanks for your input. I already did test with another email address as you suggested. I did that way back at the beginning so that I could be sure that the problem was at the server end.

When I sent to my personal email address (on my personal website which resides on a different server) I received the form with a timestamp even though it was sending to an address that had a physical mail box associated to it. The same form reached the other email address with no timestamp. So the problem is with the receiving end of the server I would think.

I will take a look at the link to test scripts that you suggested to see if that helps.

Thanks for your help.

Lucie

[lucieb]

Hi again, Russell,

I tested out the PHP scripts myself to see what would happen and I got the test emails just fine with both testmail and testmail2. The emails had timestamps. I also tried changing the settings for the F-option and it changed nothing.

For now, since I have fixed my problem by creating an alias and removing the mail box, I will leave it at that. I have spent far too much time on this problem as it is and my host server does not seem very interested in finding the problem.

I really appreciate the help I got from this forum. You guys are great! It would be fabulous if everyone we deal with was as helpful and as interested. Wishful thinking!!

Take care,

Lucie