Limit on form submission notifications in a certain amount of time?

There isn’t anything in the plugin to stop sending the emails unless a setting is changed. You may be having trouble with your web host, so you’re doing the right thing to figure it out. Get back to me if they say there is nothing wrong. You’ll need to see the PHP error log to see if an error is stopping the emails going out.

Hey xnau,

I’m kind of at a loss. My host support guys can’t seem to figure out what’s going on. When PDb doesn’t send and email nothing shows up in the logs like an attempt was made. I’ve looked through the PHP logs and I don’t see anything related to PDb or WP SMTP (the SMTP plugin I use to make all email get sent via SMTP rather than PHP’s mail() function).

I haven’t looked, but I imagine PDb sends email with wp_mail() rather than just mail(), right? It has to because sometimes it does successfully send notifications.

I’m open to suggestions; I’m not sure how else to troubleshoot. I hate these intermittent problems…

Thanks,

-Luis

Luis,

So, the way to test this is to make the registrations yourself, using an email you can check and make several tests. If you have it set up to send receipt emails, you will get two emails for each test. The most likely explanation for not getting every one is that your email client is doing something (like a spam filter) to block or hide those emails.

The plugin uses wp_mail() so a plugin that changes how WP sends email will also change how Participants Database sends emails.

The way I have been testing has been exactly as you describe, making registrations myself. Sometimes I get them, other times I don’t. The recipient of the notifications is an email address on the host and I’m checking the email on the host itself.

Today all of my tests haven’t triggered any emails. My support team at my hosting company says that the times I say the emails weren’t sent out nothing appears in the logs that even an attempt was made to send an email out.

I need to use an SMTP plugin to change the way WP sends email because my web host requires SMTP authentication. Is there an SMTP plugin you recommend?

Any other ideas as to what I can do to try to see what’s going on in the background?

Thanks,

-Luis

Not much else to do, except make sure you’re looking at the right error log. Error logs in PHP can be placed in different directories depending on where the error took place (and this behavior is dependent on your particular PHP configuration) so I’d suggest getting into your FTP and looking for an error log in your wp-admin directory.

Also, try testing on another browser where you’re not logged in.

Does the SMTP plugin have an email test function? Does this work reliably?

Yep, I tested the SMTP plugin repeatedly and got emails instantly. I queried my support team again and they noticed that the email notifications weren’t triggered at the [pdb_signup_thanks] page. Because they would try to fill out the form again they would visit the [pdb_signup] page again. It wasn’t until then that the notifications would be sent.

So, I think I’ve found a bug. The record is added to the database at the time the form is submitted but the emails aren’t sent at that time. It seems they’re not sent at the thanks page either. They’re not sent until the user visits the signup page again and get the thank you message instructing the user to wait for the email.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

-Luis

As a work around, in the settings, I’ve set the thanks page to “Same Page” so it stays on the signup page. For some reason the thank you message isn’t formatted nicely like it is on the thanks page, but at least the emails get sent.

-Luis

Huh, there is more to it than that, I’d love to be able to duplicate this bug and see what’s happening in your case.

Do you have the “action” attribute set in either of your signup or signup
thanks shortcodes?

Hi there,

Nope, both short codes don’t have any attributes in them.

-Luis

OK, well it turns out that wouldn’t matter. I’m just trying to understand how this is happening…anyway, thanks.

You should be able to tweak the thanks message formatting in the “thanks message” setting, you’ll have to take a look at the HTML and see why it’s different.

If I was going to get deeper into this, I’d need a temporary login so I can poke around your site. If you want me to investigate further, send me an email at support AT xnau.com