Forums | MacLife

Sometimes when I try and make a post, I'll get an error message that says, "Failed sending email," and the post is not made. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, what's the problem? Oh, and sorry if this is in the wrong forum. It could probably go somewhere else, but I'm already here .

The same thing has happened to me on numerous occasions. Sometimes the post actually goes through, other times, it doesn't. The old mp3 song thread seems to suffer from this problem.

It's weird, but yeah. Happened to me a couple times.

Perhaps it's when people have the boards notify by e-mail when a new post is made?

What web browser have you all been using? Or have you got this error with more than one different browser? I've been using OmniWeb exclusively when I post.

It's just a strange bug in phpBB. They'll iron it out eventually.

Huh, I haven't had that problem since the very early days of the new forums.  I dunno what's up.  I'll ask GUI and Tony.

It's a very nasty problem.  The post will go through, but the total post count for the thread will not be incremented.  After a while of it, you'll end up with threads that think they're much shorter than they really are.  After the AtAT Forums fell victim to this bug (it's when the forums time out trying to talk to the SMTP server to send e-mail), the 1st AtAT Word Association game got destroyed.  The thread was about 300 pages long, but because of the bug, it only thought it was about 275 pages long.  So the maximum it would let a viewer go was to the 275th page.  Posting would lead you to the last page, and at the bottom it would say:

Page 300 of 275.

With a high-traffic place like the MAF having this problem, the corrupted threads that result from this issue could be disastrous.

Oh, goody.  How does one fix it?

If a thread is less than 20 pages, you can use the Split tool to split the thread from the first post, and the missing posts will then be re-counted and the thread's length sized appropriately.  The side effect of this is that the second person to post in the thread will now appear as the thread starter, and the first post will essentially vanish.

Unfortunately, for threads longer than 20 pages or so, the split process takes so long that phpBB will exceed the server's maximum execution time (default is 30 seconds) and the split process will fail.  At this point, the best solution is to lock the thread and try again.

N.B.: The Resync button in the Admin panel has no effect on this particular issue.

I responded a bit ago to Kirk in the Squad a little earlier. You are correct in that a reliable mailserver helps, we have 1 and a backup, but....e-mail is a 2 way street.

The users email must also be functioning

If the user is going to use a throwaway e-mail addy, that's fine, but they must turn off all notifications.

So if you want notifcations EVER you MUST use a valid e-mail addy that gets checked every so often.

You can turn notifications off in your profile (upper right corner last row on the left)

I know hotmail no longer keeps accounts active after 21 days without a login....point to ponder.

I have a .mac account and no notifications turned on.  Maybe .mac isn't as reliable as it ought to be?

But you see, Scott, that would make sense. The phpBB group is strongly against such things.

I'll try to fire off some instructions to niko on how to switch that all around. What's odd though, is some people (including myself) never encounter this problem. Any ideas on this? We're using the local mail server, which seems to work (at least part-time). Hmm...

But you see, Scott, that would make sense. The phpBB group is strongly against such things.

Yea, they do seem to have a wide range of logic in the structure.  One of my favorites is the use of the xml compliant <br \> tag, but the the rest of the code is flat out nasty in some places.  My next launch of AppleAddict.com is going to be 100% xml/css2 compliant.  That has been the biggest pain, but the rendered page size is 1/4 it's current size.  I think I'll still be able to upgrade with little problem.

I'll try to fire off some instructions to niko on how to switch that all around. What's odd though, is some people (including myself) never encounter this problem. Any ideas on this? We're using the local mail server, which seems to work (at least part-time). Hmm...

My guess is that it is topic specific and not user specific. It should have nothing to do with user replying, only the user who is watching. So few people use that feature.  I'll mark this topic to notify me.  Reply and see if it gives you that error.  If that is not the case, it may be a specific user mail address.

I tried to reproduce the problem yesterday but couldn't do it, entering bogus emails and turning on notification resulted in no error, I tried all kinds of combinations but still couldn't reproduce it?!

I've seen that error from time to time. I've never used "notify of replies" and I've never changed the e-mail address in my profile*...

FWIW, I use Chimera always.

*I guess I should update it, since my mac.com address is no longer active.