sp does not register users… nor does it send emails about registration…  users, registration and logins are all part of wp…

latest version of wp?

if you have set up any email settings in the forum on forum – options – email settings, you might verify they are correct…

do you get the same behavior with the default wp theme and other wp plugins disabled?

Here’s what I did:

Took SimplePress off the test forum, deactivated all plugins, went to the WP default theme. Version 4.0

Tried to register as a new user for the first time; it worked and password was emailed to my account.

Did a clean new upload of SP on this site.

Message:

“This plugin does not have a valid header.”

Went in through plugin folder and activated and installed SP. That worked. Did not change any settings.

Tried to register as new user for a second time. The result was exactly the same problem as before—I never received a registration email. But when I logged back in as admin, I could see that my “new user” I’d just created was there.

Deactivated and deleted SimplePress.

Tried to register as new user for a third time. It worked perfectly and I received a registration email with my password.

I know that SimplePress doesn’t have its own users and that registration is through WordPress… but do you see why I feel like SP has to somehow have something to do with what’s going on? Every single time SP is added, the registration problem instantly starts; every time it’s deleted, the registration problem instantly stops. Everyone I have talked to in my area wants $75 an hour to fix the problem with an estimate of up to 10 (TEN!) hours, and none of them really knows anything about SP. I’ve been hoping to get the main site started for such a long time, and a lot of people are excited about it… but I’ve been completely stuck on this. I would be happy to pay for extra help if this problem could just be fixed.

what about the email settings I asked about?

trying to help, but since we are not involved in the process, not sure what could be going on… anything in the php error log?

In addition to the question from Mr Papa – have you tried turning off the option to ‘Use the Simple:Press new user email version’ on the SP admin options elaim panel? Depending upon other WP plugins active this can, rarely, cause a conflict.

The problem was SOLVED!! (I think.) After dozens of hours of torturous ordeals, it all came together. 

Here’s what finally worked:

 I went to the test site. There were no WP plugins activated at all.

The email settings in SP were the same as the clean install, but I remembered what Dreamhost had said about the “spoofing” issue, so I actually went in and changed them so that  the email from and domain name matched the one for the site itself (admin@allfics.com) Then I de-activated the Simple:Press new user email version option.

Tried to register as a new user… IT WORKED. O.o.

(didn’t get too excited yet…)

Then, I went to the main site (allfics.com)

Did the same thing there… changed the email forum settings so that  the email from and domain name matched the one for the site itself (admin@allfics.com) Then I de-activated the Simple:Press new user email version option.

Tried to register as a new user… it DIDN’T work. But I knew that I had to be on to something!

So THEN I  de-activated every WordPress plugin in the main site. I then went back and re-activated them one  by one. After each new activation, I logged out as admin and registered as a new user. Each time, I tried to see if it would work. Each time, it DID work and I received a registration email.

There’s a list of the plugins that were okay at the bottom of this post, but here’s the main point…

But then I came to THIS:

WP super cache: when activated, said it had a conflict with total cache.

So I stopped right there. With all of the above plugins activated, the email options set to the ones that Dreamhost probably liked, and the ‘Use the Simple:Press new user email version’ option turned off, the registration worked.

WP Super Cache might have been causing or contributing to the problem all along. I don’t know exactly what happened, but that’s the one plugin that had a specific problem. One major point is that a message came up on  another one of my sites (with SP), and it said WP Super Cache wasn’t somehow configured to work with SP. There was no way to actually access WPSC’s settings panel, though; I kept getting “locked out” type messages.

So… I would say JUST from my own experience that people should probably avoid WP Super Cache. But I think… I THINK… that things are working now. On the main site, with WPSC deactivated and all the steps above followed… registration is working.

I wrote an entire rant about this experience… I do a lot of humor writing… and one of the essential messages is that “”free”” support sounds much better than it is. A lot of “free” forums all too frequently consist of experts proving how contemptuous they can be towards users who need help. (IMHO, of course…) So I really appreciate the SP forums.   There are some very good reasons to pay a small fee for support.

If anyone ever runs into this again, here’s a list of the plugins that worked:

Akismet—okay

Link Manager—okay

Simple SEO- okay

Staffer—okay

Statcomm MULTISITE edition—okay

W3 total cache: okay

WordPress Facebook: okay

Blubrry powerpress and mycred: okay

Wow… well glad you got it sorted!

I’m glad too.

But the entire thing made me realize that in running a WP site, I need and want to know more than the “consumer” side. I posted a long piece about this in the hosting company forum… basically saying that they need to not blame users for not understanding how much they really should know when they get into WP, because so many sources out there say that you just don’t need to know that much. (The WordPress: The Missing Manual being a good example. It mentions PHP four times, mysql twice, and ftp once, nothing being explained in any detail. And the WP Beginner codex is exactly the same way!!)

So here’s my next question… what’s a good source/site/book/online course/etc for actually trying to take the next steps into WP knowledge? It just seems like there’s such a gap between “user” level information on the front end and anything more extensive on the back end, and I think I need to know more about how to get there.   Thoughts from all the smart people here?

There is a WordPress for Dummies book which is pretty good beginning point…

and Professional WordPress is another good one, but a little more advanced…