The problem has been fixed. I can now reply to posts with email.
I was replying to the email that I was receiving, I was not sending the reply to the mailbox designated for the forum itself. How is this not in the instructions for the plugin? Do you remember when I created the thread about your plugin instructions needing to be more clear? For example:
“Then, all your users need to do in order to reply to a post by email, is send a reply to the designated forum email address. This address will be listed in a convenient mailto link within the mail itself.”
Also, this problem could have easily been cleared up when I asked this little gem of a question:
Whenever I reply to one of the emails, I only get a mail in my own inbox… a notification comes FROM trav@howtofightnow.com to let me know that there has been a forum post (this is an admin email… the same one I get any time there has been a post) and when I reply to it, my reply email just ends up in my own email box again (trav@howtofightnow.com) . Nothing has made it into the gmail inboxes by virtue of a reply to an email alert… it doesn’t even look as if they’ve tried to make it into those boxes.
This is a pretty clear indicator that i was just replying to my own email… without sending anything to the forum email box. I was doing this after reading these instructions within the email:
* To post a reply by email * – please remove all old text from ABOVE the insert line at the top and enter your plain text reply above it. Do not remove ANY of this email text. Please remember that your reply may not appear immediately in the forum
Nowhere in that instruction does it say anything about using the forum’s email address. You don’t get that instruction until you look at the “to create a new topic” bit listed here:
* To start a new topic in this forum * – send your email to mailto:whattolearn@howtofightnow.com. The subject name will become the new topic title
Yes, I should have known that replying to my own email address would not work. However, I don’t know what type of magic is used in this plugin. I don’t know if it’s able to access my email address and the wordpress email address of the site to detect “replies above this line”.
This all could have been prevented with incredibly simple instructions.
AAAAaaaaaannnnyhow….. thank you guys for your time and for the extensive support. Did I set a record here with 7 pages?
I appreciate your dedication and patience. You guys are great.
Now do yourselves a favor and make the instructions literally STEP BY STEP IDIOT PROOF. I actually have a genius IQ… I am quite sure that I’m not the only person that thought this could work just by hitting “reply”.
Except for the very simple fact that for everyone else it DOES work just by hitting ‘reply’. And I see no reason to change those instructions. So I still think you have a most convoluted and over-complex email system somewhere along the line.
I actually don’t know what a ‘genius’ IQ is measured as these days. Mine is 155 which I know is OK but I don’t think merits the ‘genius’ tag.
Anyway – good that you have it working even if in a non-standard way.
How can the reply work if the email is being sent to me from “trav@howtofightnow.com”?
My reply email simply goes to that email box… which just ends up on my computer. If the email has to make it into the forum’s box… wouldn’t the notification mail have to be sent from that particular forum?
Can you please go into my site and see what’s wrong? I’ve tried really hard.
It does not try and change the ‘sent from’ email address in the notifications. It sets the ‘reply to’ address. If that is not being set then you either have, as I believe, a weird and non-standard email setup, or – have something in your WP site that is also messing with the reply to address which is not something WP tends to set.
Ok…. so the issue is that the “reply to” email address is not being set correctly. Now THAT is interesting. What function or code within simplepress is supposed to do this? I want to be able to have something for the people at google apps when I call them to figure out the issue.
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before we go there have you actually looked at one of your notification emails set up for a PBE reply and checked the reply_to data? You may have to look at the header if your client does not show it normally.
It would appear that the reply-to is being set as “trav@howtofightnow.com” and not at all the forum email address… I pulled this from the header at gmail itself. We are correct in the assumption being the failure in the reply-to address.
Am I supposed to have changed or enabled a setting anywhere within simple press that alters the reply-to email address?
All of my notifications are generated from my “admin options” in which I have selected to be notified of every single post by email. Should the mails be generated from a different function within simple press?
At least now we’re getting down to the source of the issue.
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No there is nothing to set. Sounds to me like your mail transport system is ignoring the ‘reply to’ setting and changing it to the ‘from’ setting.
That CAN happen in gmail if have set up rules around the addresses you want to send from. I remember being somewhat confused by this a long time ago.
OOoooohhhh….. I also use POSTMARK in order to send my wordpress mail. THAT could be the source of the issue.
I have 5000 new subscribers to my site every day… that requires three emails every time. If I sent 15,000 mails from my one mail server, that would result in immediate issues. I will contact postmark support about this immeditely.
Ok guys, I have valuable correspondance from Postmark here.
Travis,
I’m not familiar with Simple Press exactly. How does it communicate with Postmark? Via the API or SMTP? You can override the reply to field using the ReplyTo parameter in the API call. Does Simple Press let you do that?
– JP
I suppose once we figure this out, it’s all smooth sailing.
ummm, we dont interact with Postmark… no clue what it is or what it does…
We simply tell WP to send an email… So I suspect the answer they are looking for is SMTP…
And since its WP that actually sends out the emails, you will have to get it to interact with Postmark, not us…
I would suggest you take a look at one of these plugins:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/postmark-approved-wordpress-plugin/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/postmark-email-for-wordpress/
Yup… that is the plugin that I use, and it is DEFINITELY overruling SP’s attempt to change the reply to address… I am already on top of them like… like… a guy without a clever simile.
Hey guys. This has been 100 percent tracked to the Postmark Email Widget that I use to send wordpress mail on my site. They are preventing simple press from changing the “reply to” address.
The only way to get around this would be to get simple press to communicate with Postmark via API… is that possible with any current solution that you guys have?