Intermitent smtp problem

[remmo]

My contact page is not working too well. Every now and then I get a customer telling me that they get a message "Can not connect to Mail Socket" after they press the send button on the form.

Another problem when I try to send an email through Actinic (to tell the customer I've sent the order) Actinic sometimes tells me that my smtp settings are incorrect and refuses to send the email.

It doesn't happen all the time only intermittently what could be the problem?

[Mike Hughes]

I would think you're probably getting this message because your host's smtp server isn't responding. The most likely causes are:

a) It's overloaded.
b) It's down for some other reason, such as being upgraded etc.
c) It's crashed.

The first one is most likely and if I were you I'd start talking to my host about it.

Mike

[remmo]

Thanks for the reply Mike. I thought it would probably have something to do with my host as the site has been running fine without problems for over 9 months now.

As I am completely not technical about these issues what are some of the things I should say to my host - given that the problem is intermittent.

Thanks

[Mike Hughes]

I think you should just say what you did above. That recently the smtp server has been failing to respond and you think it needs looking at. They shouldn't expect you to identify the fault or suggest a fix.

If they ask for more details such as times, etc then you'll find plenty of example error messages in your error.err log file here: http://www.thehoneyfarm.com.au/acatalog/error.err

Mike