Geeklog Forums

Hi all,

Very rarely do we get any new users who register and then actually sign in. 1000s of them are spam but every once in a while there's a real person there and in a small subset of those cases they actually make the effort to contact us another way and then I go in and set them active and set a password for them etc.

I always ask them to check trash and spam/junk mail and they always say there's nothing from us in there either.

It's hard to know just how much this has damaged our site over the years, maybe there were key people that were going to volunteer or donate that got put off, thinking we had snubbed them.

Every once in a while I've tried creating dummy new users. Sometimes I get the registration email, sometimes not. I've read old threads on the forum suggesting my provider could've been blacklisted by some sites, that may well be the case and difficult to overcome and a constant battle.

But what I'd like to know is can I see where the email are going out, just to check that first? In configuration I have a noreply address set and backend set to mail. I have no idea if this is appropriate.

If I log into the noreply account it has a couple of very old emails in its Inbox but nothing in sent mail. Should the registration emails for new users be in sent mail? If there are errors which log would I expect to see it in?

Thanks.

No, nothing will be in the sent mail as it is Geeklog sending the email and not the program you are using to check the mail.

New user registration uses the same email functions as other parts of Geeklog so if you get Admin notifications or can send yourself emails through the user profile then most likely it is not directly a Geeklog issue.

Your email server could be blacklisted which is not necessary the fault of you especially since your host probably shares the same server with many other people. You can check if it is on any black lists by using mxtoolbox:

http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

I would also test your own registration by using an email address from your host along with a Gmail and Hotmail account. If all those work then most likely the problem isn't with Geeklog or your email server.

If the email account doesn't exist or the email has issues sending the user registration email most email servers should email you back an error report. You can check this by using your own domain and signing up with an email account you know doesn't exist.

Also if you are not using the features of Spam-X I suggest you use it along with the ban plugin as they are setup to combat users who generate spam. They are by no means perfect but they cut my spam down by a fair bit.

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.

Thanks for the info.

I used your link and my host is blacklisted by protectedsky based on bad reputation. I don't know whether that's a commonly used one or not to know if it's a likely explanation. It doesn't allow manual unlisting requests, you just have to wait for the reputation to improve.

No I don't use Spam X, I seem to recall having problems and giving up, may have been years ago. I just went in now and it is not installed so I clicked on install (v1.2.2) and it crashed, error log says:

Sun 11 Dec 2016 23:30:30 ACDT - Attempting to install the 'spamx' plugin

Sun 11 Dec 2016 23:30:30 ACDT - Attempting to create 'spamx Admin' group

Sun 11 Dec 2016 23:30:30 ACDT - 1062: Duplicate entry 'spamx Admin' for key 'grp_name'. SQL in question:

Sun 11 Dec 2016 23:30:30 ACDT - Error creating plugin group

In terms of the Admin email, when I log in as Admin I tried sending my normal user account an email by clicking on my normal user account in the Users list. After 15 mins no sign of the email.

Earlier I also created a new yahoo email account and tried to register. After 24 hrs no email received.

I also tried to create a new user with an email address for my domain that does not exist. After 15 mins I have not received anything suggesting a problem. I also ran out of disk space a few weeks ago and the site stopped allowing image uploads but I didn't receive any warning, only diagnosed by logging into cpanel.

I do know the site can forward emails on to me, i.e. emails to my normal user account on that domain do get on forwarded to my day to day yahoo account.

Not sure what to do about protectedsky but you could read this thread to see if it helps:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1589545

For the Spam-X issue it looks like your User group for spam-x still exists. If spam-x is still uninstalled (whatever it says in the plugin admin) you will have to delete the group, make sure the spam-x tables do not exist in the database and then reinstall it.

You have a fairly large site so you should be running a few spam solutions. I really recommend spam-x and the ban plugin (which will block spammer visitors who meet certain criteria)

For your email do you look at your bounce back requests to see what they say the problem is? (they usually do) Make sure your No-Reply E-Mai forwards any messages you receive to your site email address (if the emails are different)

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.