200 Members Awaiting Activation - Surely a problem on my side?

[flyingmembers]

On my forum I noticed that I have 200 members in succession who haven't activated their email.  Now that leads me to these conclusions:

- They all have spam filters, so they don't receive the email.  If so, can I change the email text which is sent out...making it less "spammy".

- They have all given me false email addresses...but I haven't received many bounce backs.

- I setup the SMTP/Sendmail email account incorrectly.  I think it's this problem.  I have a POP account, tried my info in the SMTP box and wouldn't configure but seems to be ok with Sendmail...

Hope anyone can suggest anything!

Cheers

[Ben_S]

How many people register on your board daily, my experience is a lot of people register but never activate their account, there is nothing wrong with the email contents, it gets past my spam assasin config no problems, and I've set up some fairly harsh rules.

Try registering a test account and seeing if you get the email.

[Thantos]

1) Check your error logs (admin -> View Forum Error Log) and look for anything dealing with the mailings
2) Try to register a dummy account and check to see if you recieve the email

[flyingmembers]

Ok the error messages are:

Your email address needs to be validated before you can login. (USERNAME)

I tested it myself using multiple account and yep, received no email

I worked a few days ago, so I removed the email SMTP info and it's still not working...any suggestions?

[Thantos]

Where was that error recieved?  It sounds like you tried to login with the test account.  Check your admin's error log as you're more likely to find better information there.

[flyingmembers]

Nope that's the error given from other users...mine's ok.

I checked with one account and didn't receive the activation email, but on another I did...strange stuff!

Still not sure how to proceed, since each member from 450 to 600 hasn't clicked on their activation email....surely my potential members can't all be stupid?!

[flyingmembers]

After a few days, I still have this problem.

My site has got 300 registrations in the past few days, and looking at the "Awaiting Activation" list none have actually activated their email....

As I mentioned in my last comment, I tested with x2 email addresses.  In one I received an email and the other I didn't receive anything!

I thought it could be to do with spam filters on the user's side but the email addresses range from - hotmail.com, msn.com, yahoo.com to comcast.net, btinternet.com...

[ryanbsoftware]

check junk/bulk mail folder. 

[[Unknown]]

Are you certain your server isn't in sorbs, etc. (spam blacklists?)

If it is, that would explain this as well.

-[Unknown]

[flyingmembers]

I worked out what the problem is, so put the answer below in case others have the problem:

Make sure SMTP is selected

then mail server : sitename.com

I had mine setup as mail.sitename.com which is used in Outlook but SMF doesn't seem to like the "mail" bit.