No email sent to customer or store owner

[pinbrook]

The biggest issue with the search IMO is not being able to use AND/OR or "keyphrase here"

sometimes a search becomes meaningless and returns to many posts by the default OR

[leehack]

I agree Jo, for community and help, it's one of the best on the net, for finding information and the way it is laid out, it is sadly lacking. They had to have a 'management' meeting to see if we were allowed a 'network' forum! - incredible.

Almost everything actinic do with regards to communication could be improved. Too much hidden, hard to find or kept secret information. Although they have improved of late after constant badgering, so credit due for that.

How can you have a forum where something like 'localhost' cannot be found easily is beyond me. I'd be astonished if calls to support were not reduced by a well laid out forum, so they are not even having to spend money to do it.

[kev67]

You would not believe how much info is hidden or hard to find in this forum, i have seen only about 10 new subjects in the last 4 months. The search has been improved but the forum is generally a mess and the search still evades many people. Having said that it can often depend on what you search term you use, had you put "SMTP problem", then the the first post in the first result mentions it.

Its criminal that one of the most common fixes cannot be found easily, you'd have sorted your problem out in 5 minutes flat.

Lee

Thank you

All I can say is "here, here"
you are smack on - I'm far from an expert and still learing the basics but have a good site going in TEST mode apart from the emails, now the emails work thanks to Bruce and other helpers on this but like you say, the search criteria is paramount and I stuffed this up and as you say, I would've sorted this out last week without being a bit "shitty" with people of which I have apologised for to Jo and Malcolm

[kev67]

Thanks Kev, you have just restored my faith.

I have been abused in several threads recently and accused of being high and mighty and a know all.... and was seriously considering withdrawing from the forum as a contributor

It is true that the more frequent posters are also the ones who often post to say "do a search and find the answer" and sometimes get abit irritated. The main reason for this is get people used to helping themselves, and to avoid this forum getting bloated with duplicate questions.

The key for me is helping people to help themselves.

What some people fail to understand is our motives for answering, its not only to give us a feeling of self importance but often it helps us to keep up to date with the day to day work we do. All to often I come across something thats not going right with Actinic, but often I also recall the post I've seen where someone else has also encountered the same thing. A quick search and I'm back on track.

To give some background on email, it probably isn't possible to come up with a definative document of things to look for as hosts/isps all have different practices which are changing by the day.

There has been a huge increase in people posting here recently due to emails not being sent from actinic. This is turn is due to hosts/isps constantly having to change their policies for sending email - to avoid their customer's accounts being hihacked by spammers. This is a constant battle.

some hosts/isp allow localhost
some hosts/isp block port 25
some hosts/isp don't allow mail relay until you ask for it
some hosts/isp don't allow SMTP
some hosts/isp insist that SMTP matches domain in business settings

If you hosted with us you would find out
we don't allow localhost, we do not block port 25, we activate mail relay - but sometimes forget, we do allow SMTP, we do force SMTP server to match email in business settings.

Other hosts will have a different set of practices.

There's another post here today about not being able to send 50 emails in one go. This again is probably a host/isp restriction (again we only allow 32 emails to be sent at once) These practices stem from again trying to prevent spammers, if we allowed our clients to send emails willy nilly our mailservers would get blacklisted.

There was also a post yesterday about speeding up a send of 30,000 emails, if this guy had acheived this (fortunately his host/isp was slowing him down) he probably would have got his send perceived as spam and his mailserver blacklisted.

For a lot of people it is simple a case of education, as they are unwittingly doing bad stuff, and are quite happy to learn better practises.

Jo, I meant no offence - if only you knew me you'd know

Reading your post is it all so true so this forum must be somehow cleared up? to prevent the same thread being made - perhaps a re-write of the manual in "child" language - honest, it will stop the same question being asked, I never knew about "localhost" at all in the SMTP

I fully understand about the blocking of loads of email, how the hell can anyone complain to you about sending 30,0000, now that is taking the p***

As you say, most if not all ISP WILL block this - AOL is well known for blocking poert 25

However, I would love it to be written or explained how the heck putting "localhost" in the network settings makes it all work for emails, why don't my settings work in V8

As you are a developer, can this be explained as what I see here is a lot of people buying a bloody great software package (I have to admit it is the dogs!) but the manual is a bit "not so user friendly for newbies" and therefore too many people on this forum asking the same thing

Even Lee said, he's only seen 4 new subjects, the rest have been asked years ago

I'll shut up now!

Sorry

[kev67]

I agree Jo, for community and help, it's one of the best on the net, for finding information and the way it is laid out, it is sadly lacking. They had to have a 'management' meeting to see if we were allowed a 'network' forum! - incredible.

Almost everything actinic do with regards to communication could be improved. Too much hidden, hard to find or kept secret information. Although they have improved of late after constant badgering, so credit due for that.

How can you have a forum where something like 'localhost' cannot be found easily is beyond me. I'd be astonished if calls to support were not reduced by a well laid out forum, so they are not even having to spend money to do it.

I feel as if someone is actually helping me here and sticking up for me..............................Lee, thank you pal

[pinbrook]

to prevent the same thread being made

Sadly this will never be acheived, there will always be people who ask before searching, although there have been a few more posts recently where people have prefixed it with I've searched and read this, this and this but still can't find a solution.

Funnily enough I did put alot of thought into writing a v8 idiots guide, but couldn't work out where I'd make any money out of it, so decided against it. I also was reticent as it would require constant updating and I wasn't sure if i wanted to do that either.

[leehack]

I feel as if someone is actually helping me here and sticking up for me..............................Lee, thank you pal

We're sick of telling the same stuff day in day out.
You're sick of not being able to find what you need to help you.
And Actinic sit there doing very little about it (forum wise).

If the top 30 posters on this forum just stopped providing FREE help for a month, the actinic support line would fall over, collapse and die. They should never forget this point.

The best thing to remember when using this forum Kev is that 90-95% of the help you get, is provided by people just like you in their own free time, who are not actinic staff and not paid to do so.

[pinbrook]

If the top 30 posters on this forum just stopped providing FREE help for a month

why did that make me snigger?

Maybe we should all take our hols together in the first 2 weeks of August.

Not really together but metaphorically.

[leehack]

why did that make me snigger?

Cos you'd like to see what would happen perhaps?

Buggered if i know Jo, i gave up trying to understand women many moons ago.

I think it would open actinic's eyes a little, care to pay for the jolly Jo?

[kev67]

Ok, I think Lee has a huge point here, whilst this is nothing to do with the "thread" it must be allowed to continue

A forum is a place to make "comments" about whatever, I should know, I have my own forum for a holiday site funnily enough so I know how annoying double, treble posts, similar threads etc can be and it WILL happen, a fact of life if you like on forums, however, what about C&Paste the most threads made here into a downlaodable format

When I got V8 I got a letter saying 30 days email support only! HELLO! most sites provide email support only anyway and no telephone cos of the cost of staff and the cost of providing the software but surely as Jo says., an idiots guide must be done - this will limit calls to Actinic for a start, and as Lee said, if the top 30 posters vanished then what would happen

I dunno on this one but I'm sure something easy could be done, I'd even help out???

[kev67]

Hang on a mo

This V8 cost me well over £800 + VAT, so the support should be huge surley?

or perhaps we should all bugger off to the sun.......................lol

[leehack]

America paves the way on software, technology and the internet.
The UK follows behind them, usually 1-2 years behind.
Actinic is a year behind the UK.

If you never forget this, you can certainly grow to love actinic as many of us have.

Take the latest 'hot' subject - "Google Checkout"

America - got it a year ago.
UK - have it now.
Actinic - probably in a years time?

As the wishlist thread illustrates, it's the norm to have it already.

[kev67]

oh yes Lee, you are right there

I'm bloody good at getting films!!...............lol

[HarryCornelius]

The answer for me

Whoever wrote:

I suspect that Actinic didn't update the Business Settings when uploading after I ticked the "Send me an Email When I have an Order to Download" and "Send Receipt Email to Customer" checkbox. This happen several times when I change the delivery price in Shipping and Handling

I would like to hug. Our emails haven't been working for quite some time, and I tried everything. This obscure trick fixed it!

So I unticked both boxes, published to web, then ticked them again, publish to web, and it worked.

Many thanks,
Harry