Forum registration problems - please share experience

Like something? Don't like something? Don't see something? Here's the place to provide feedback about the SilentPCReview.com site. User feedback is very important to us -- we really do read the posts in this forum.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee, Edward Ng

Post Reply
Skinjob
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:42 am
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Forum registration problems - please share experience

Post by Skinjob » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:31 pm

I just recently registered for this forum, but was unable to successfully activate my account because I never received the activation email.

I emailed Mike Chin about the problem and after working together for several days we gave up and he was nice enough to manually activate my account.

However, we would both like to know the ultimate cause of the problem. So he asked me to add this post and ask if any other forum members had similar problems or have any ideas what might be wrong.

Here's the scenario:
  • - I completed the registration page and got the message that an activation email had been sent
    - My ISP is Comcast
    - To eliminate my computer/Outlook as the source of the problem, I only used Comcast's webmail interface to check for the activation email
    - I disabled all server-side SPAM filtering in the Comcast mailbox preferences
    - And still the activation email was never delivered to my mailbox
I should also add that I've registered with many phpBB forums in the past that use the exact same procedure and have never had a problem. Also, I was able to receive email from Mike without any problem. Mike's email and the activation email both come from this domain. Not sure if they both use the same SMTP server, though.

So we don't know if the problem is with phpBB, some SMTP server down the line, or with Comcast.

Anyone else have similar problems or have any ideas?

MikeC
Site Admin
Posts: 12285
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Contact:

Post by MikeC » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:42 pm

This seems to happen periodically. Not regularly but often enough that I wonder what's the real culprit or whether it is a convergence of bad factors -- the perfect storm type of thing...

Ralf Hutter
SPCR Reviewer
Posts: 8636
Joined: Sat Nov 23, 2002 6:33 am
Location: Sunny SoCal

Post by Ralf Hutter » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:59 pm

Over the years I've been contacted by at least a dozen people that have had this same sort of issue, but in all but one or two of the cases, it was due to bouncing emails. All were were successfully resolved, except for a few that I was never able to get in contact with (due to their bouncing emails).

Skinjob
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:42 am
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL

Post by Skinjob » Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:16 pm

Hmmm... I have notification enabled, but I'm still not getting any emails.

The email address in my profile is definitely correct and I'm able to get email from Mike no problem. What the heck is going on?

I've temporarily enabled "Always show my e-mail address" if someone would like to shoot me a test email.

Mike - do you have access to the SMTP logs? Or is there some other way to track down what's happening?

NeilBlanchard
Moderator
Posts: 7681
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Maynard, MA, Eaarth
Contact:

Post by NeilBlanchard » Thu Nov 15, 2007 8:18 pm

Greetings & welcome to SPCR,

My ISP, Verizon, used to bounce/block all emails from automated systems -- I used to have to have a Yahoo account to get registered/activated, and then change the email after it got started... :roll:

Post Reply