Email Notifications

[syoung]

I finished setting up Web Auction and it looks great. I created some test users and a test item. I am not receiving any outbid notifications even though I have set all of the proper places. If anyone has any helpful suggestions or troubleshooting advice, I am all ears.

Sean

[shannah]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for posting this to the forum.Ê If there is a bug I'd like to squash it.Ê There are 4 options here:

1. PHP is not configured for email properly on your server.

2. There is a configuration setting in Web Auction that you are missing.

3. There is a bug in Web Auction that needs to be sorted out.

The easiest one to check on is #2.Ê The things to check for this:

a. In "Auction Settings" make sure that "Send outbid notifications" is checked.
b. In your user's profile (click in the upper right), make sure that "Receive outbid notifications" is checked and that the user has a valid email address entered.

To check that PHP is configured properly.Ê You can do this by writing a simple PHP script to send an email to yourself: e.g.:

$res = mail('myaddress@yourdomain.com', 'A test email', 'This is only a test');
if ( $res ) echo "Email test succeeded.Ê YOu should have a mail in your mailbox";
else echo "Email failed.";
?>

If the email fails, it's time to start looking at PHP and your sendmail program:

http://php.net/mail

Hope this helps.

Let me know how it goes.
-Steve

[syoung]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for posting this to the forum.Ê If there is a bug I'd like to squash it.Ê There are 4 options here:

1. PHP is not configured for email properly on your server.

2. There is a configuration setting in Web Auction that you are missing.

3. There is a bug in Web Auction that needs to be sorted out.

The easiest one to check on is #2.Ê The things to check for this:

a. In "Auction Settings" make sure that "Send outbid notifications" is checked.
b. In your user's profile (click in the upper right), make sure that "Receive outbid notifications" is checked and that the user has a valid email address entered.

To check that PHP is configured properly.Ê You can do this by writing a simple PHP script to send an email to yourself: e.g.:

$res = mail('myaddress@yourdomain.com', 'A test email', 'This is only a test');
if ( $res ) echo "Email test succeeded.Ê YOu should have a mail in your mailbox";
else echo "Email failed.";
?>

If the email fails, it's time to start looking at PHP and your sendmail program:

http://php.net/mail

Hope this helps.

Let me know how it goes.
-Steve

Steve,

Thanks for the quick reply. After I turned on postfix everything started working. I really appreciate your help. If there is anything I can do, please let me know.

Sean

[bwilson]

I seem to be having an issue with email notifications as well. I checked the auction settings and both send notification boxes are checked. I checked the conf.ini file and both values are set to "1". I tested with a "USER" account and made a bid. Neither the user or admin received an email notofication. I then tried your suggested script and the email was sent successfully.

I've been experimenting with this on and off for a bit, and the odd thing is that the admin account did receive a notification when an auction expired without a bid being placed.

I'm not sure what to check next. Any suggestions?

BTW. Thanks for sharing these terrific apps.

[shannah]

Hi Bob,

Currently web auction only sends outbid notifications, not 'bid' notifications. I.e. if You make the first bid on a product, you don't receive an email. If someone makes a 2nd bid on that product (i.e. outbids you) you will receive a notification that you have been outbid.

This is probably why no notifications were sent in the case that you specified.

Your question did, however, force me to go look at the code, and I found a small bug that results in Administrators not receiving notifications for bids where the user does not want to receive outbid notifications. The admin should receive notifications independent of the bidder's preferences.

This is all handled by the notifyHighBidder() function in the include/functions.inc.php directory, if you want to try and follow the logic.

I'll add this to my todo list for the next version.

Best regards

Steve

[bwilson]

Thanks Steve,

Sure enough, after entering a second bid on the product, both notification emails went through smoothly. Thanks for the direction on the other issue you found. I don't think it will affect us much. I'm sure most people would want to be notified if they are outbid, but it's still good to know about it.

Bob