BL5 - Contact Form emails not reaching me

Hi,

I have recently learned that messages sent to me via the Contact Form on my website are not reaching me. When I test the form myself, I do receive the emails.

Here’s info that may be relavent:

Backlight 5 with all updates installed
Site: www.johnblaustein.com
Email address: john@johnblaustein.com
Server PHP version 7.2 (lots of other versions available)
Email configuration:
– mail
– SMTP host: smtp.gmail.com (my username and password included)
– Port 465
– Security SSL

Perhaps I should be sending Contact Form emails from my web host’s email server instead of the Gmail server. (smtp.johnblaustein.com) Or… should I configure BL to send Contact Form messages to my Gmail address instead of my website address? As you can see, I’m not sure of where the problem is.

Ben… can you please advise? I’m happy to send you my BL login via private email if that would be helpful.

Thank you.

John

Hi @John_Blaustein, in my experience, sending email via Gmail’s SMTP hasn’t worked for the last while. It required enabling ‘insecure apps’, but I can’t even see that setting any more.

I suggest trying the ‘mail’ setting rather than ‘smtp’ and seeing how that performs with the test emails and contact form. Depending on your host, configuring your email address in the hosting cPanel can help with delivery. Even if you’re not using your host to manage your email, this configuration often seems to help make valid your sending address with their mail system.

Thanks, Ben.

Here are my current settings–edited a few minutes ago to delete the SMTP/Gmail settings:

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When I send a test from the Special Links page, it works. The contact form seems to work too. Are my settings what you would suggest? Any changes?

Hi @John_Blaustein, those settings look fine. The only thing I can think of is that the Contact Us sets the reply-to field to match the email address input by the user. Can you try using your own email address (as used in the Site Email) on the Contact Us form to see whether that gets through?

Hi @Ben,

I use the same email address everywhere, including in my cPanel email configuration. I’ve done a little more testing and the contact form emails (and BL test emails) are now getting through once I changed the BL settings to remove Gmail. If further testing reveals problems, I’ll write back.

In the meantime… thank you!

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