Subscribe2 Plugin Stopped Sending Notification Emails

@wpdavid

This trouble shooting guide is a great place to start:
https://subscribe2.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/troubleshooting-emails-in-subscribe2/

In particular you should install an email logging plugin. Also bear in mind that error logs will log PHP errors, but if the emails are generated and passed to the sendmail binary on the server PHP will not record any error, but the emails may still fail.

I have the same problem…the digest emails have stopped working. I can still send manual emails using the “Send Email” form. The “Email Log” plugin shows that no notification emails are sent. I can only see emails for password resets etc. So something is broken in this plugin.

The s2_digest_cron job is present in the cron table and every day it is rescheduled for the next day. Yet, no digest emails are being sent.

Right now i’m using WordPress v4.4.2 and Subscribe2 v10.21. All other plugins used are updated to the latest versions.

@nilrog

Try reverting to per-post emails in the settings and saving and then return to your preferred digest interval and save again – that resets all of the subscribe2 cron data and tasks and might help.

Already tried that and it did not help. Is there no way of getting some better logs from this plugin about what it is doing, or what pending updates it has to send out?

@nilrog

There isn’t a debug mode in Subscribe2 or any additional logging. However if you are comfortable with PHP code or in PHPMyAdmin you can see if there are any posts pending for Subscribe2 with the following SQL

global $wpdb;
$sql = “SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts AS a INNER JOIN $wpdb->postmeta AS b ON b.post_id = a.ID WHERE b.meta_key = ‘_s2_digest_post_status’ AND b.meta_value = ‘pending'”;
$posts = $wpdb->get_results( $sql );

It’s also worth checking that you don’t have any excluded categories and that the “Disable email notifications is checked by default on authoring pages?” setting isn’t checked in the Settings->Appearance page. Both of these could suppress the generation and sending of emails.

Hello, i received my last email for posting in my blog the 3rd of April, later I didn’t receive any more published posts…

People can subscribe but i think they are not receiving the post by email.

I added a news email to try if it receive the posts…

I think i will try some other plug-in…??

Hi, guys.
If you haven’t tried this yet, it’s worth doing.
Since WordPress 4.2 or so, it started checking from-address strictly.
If the mail domain doesn’t match with the site domain, it wouldn’t send email. The problem is that there is no way to correct it from Subscribe2’s setting.

And I could solve it by inserting the following code in functions.php:

function custom_reply_to($header) {
     $header['From'] = 'mail-mg@your-site-domain-name';
     $header['Reply-To'] = 'mail-mg@your-site-domain-name';
     return $header;
}
add_filter('s2_email_headers', 'custom_reply_to');

@nakamah

Well, that is certainly the case for my problematic setup. And I can’t change it to the same domain as the site as we currently do not control that domains mailserver. It will change in the future, but for now the sending email and the site domain will differ.

This would also explain why emails suddenly stopped sending. But I would like to hear from the developer first before I start playing with anything.

What is funny though is that emails can be sent manually if triggered. Which kind of contradicts the statement above.

nilrog,

In my case too, I could send mails manually, and my mail server’s domain name is my hosting server’s, not my own.

I use Contactform 7 plug-in and it is sending mails without any problem.

I wondoer if subscribe2 ignores originating email address set by general settings of wordpress, and sets it’s host name in the mail header when it sends update notifications, then wordpress knocks off the mails.

Thanks for your input. I guess this plugin is broken until the developer chimes in again. Something has changed, either in the plugin or in WordPress ??

And judging from the reviews…we are not alone…

@nakamah / @nilrog

It does seem like the current developer have other priorities right now and I’m not sure what plans they may have, but I try to offer support as best I can as the previous developer.

I can see anywhere in the WordPress code where the ‘From’ address is checked but sending from an off-domain address is not likely to get very far with hosting companies – it looks far too much like spam.

Additionally, some companies don’t like use of the ‘Reply-To’ header, it’s is abused in spam and phishing emails so some will reject emails with this header set.

You need to speak candidly with your hosting provider about your needs and their rules. Then find a way to make your site work on your current hosting plan or move to another provider. I’ve always used this approach and have never had any long term issues with my hosting providers.

But there is no problem in sending emails. It is just that this plugin no longer does so automatically. It worked fine up until a couple of months ago when it suddenly stopped working.

@nilrog

I hear what you are saying but Subscribe2 and WordPress is written in PHP which is a scripting language. If there is an issue in the code it won’t work at all for anyone. Issue affecting smaller numbers of users are due to configuration changes on the server.

There can be differences in manual and automatic sending of the Subscribe2 email – some hosts block the WordPress cron functionality as it causes spikes in server demand. In order for the host to keep the server online (usually because they have over-sold it and are hosting too many sites from 1 server) they will start limiting what individual site accounts are allowed to do. And of course they deny this because they want to keep your business and money!