A few days ago I received a mail from a reader, notifying me that my contact form was not working. I use Contact Form 7 on my blog and I was very surprised by the fact that it was not working. It usually is just plug and play.
The error message I was getting was “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”. A quick Googling and I came upon this post by Mario Vargas. I then realized that the error I was getting was because my mail settings were messed up. You can find my mail settings on the screenshot below:
Wrong config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.
As you can see, I was using the reader’s email address to send me emails. This was the wrong thing to do. Even if the mail would be sent, it would be flagged as spam. As a general rule, you should only send emails belonging to your domain from your domain. (send only @technoreply.com mails from www.technoreply.com).
So, I applied this formula. I changed the senders email to one that belongs to me. The screenshot below speaks for itself:
Good config for Contact Form 7. Click on picture to enlarge.
This simple little trick worked for me. It saved me a lot of time since I did not have to tweak my server.
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Sometimes you get lucky and this was one of them. Your fix had me up and going within minutes. Thanks very much!
fixed it for me too thanks.
Thanks Jevin!
I was stumped by this very problem and tried downloading both Cimy Swift SMTP and WP-Mail-SMTP based on advice posted on other forums. I am a relative novice at Wordpress so most of this was greek to me. The above mentioned SMTP plugins did not fix my issue (undoubtedly because I wasn’t using them properly). Still, this tip did work and was relatively simply.
After following your explanation I was up and running in no time. FYI, I created my Wordpress site through Yahoo Small business (specifically via the control panel). The email that I had to use was the email that I’d set the wordpress blog up under.
My website is http://www.airsoftreports.com. For illustration purposes my email is example@airsoftreports.com (Not really I just want to avoid spam). I had created that email address with Yahoo and that is the email address that is the default in my Word Press settings menu.
Hence, that is the email that allowed the contact form 7 to work. I tried putting in other email addresses but none worked.
I don’t know why, but happily things are working now. Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for this tip! I always use Contact Form 7 and just encountered this problem installing a site on a server which has already made me swear several times! Great tip – worked straight away, no plugins needed.
Hi Jevin,
Thanks for your kind help. I was looking for the solution for whole the day and at the end of the day I came across your article and found the perfect solution that works for me. Again thank you very much for your help.
Regards.
Themes…
I saw this really great post today….
i was also having a problem sending error with same error with red border.
can you assist me on how to setup. currently using wordpress 3.0 and this plugin.
correct me if im wrong? from what i understand the sender is ME right? but my Domain from where i install my wordpress doesnt have domain email. just using Yahoo n Gmail as my personal email.
How do i resolve this issue.
Thanks.
Really wanted to put a Leave Reply Message / Contact us. in my site.,
Hi John
You’ve got it right. The sender is you @ your domain. Even if you don’t have a domain email, this fix will work. Just use a fictitious email address in that case. Let me know if it works.
Im using only subdomain to test my website hosted in awardspace.us., already tried different email Yahoo. Gmail and even i dont have email of awardspace.us i also did try making even though its not exsisting myemail.awardspace.us but still not resolve the problem. same Error with the red border
Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.
Is there a way to troubleshoot this. i really need to have Contact form / feedback form in my site.
by the way i have just read SMTP is disable in free account im just using a free account to test my website.
Amazing! Thanks so much. I was scratching my head at this for a while. I wonder why it doesn’t say anything about this in the actual plugin FAQ?
Pure Genius!! It worked. Just be sure that you capture and use the Tag for From.
I have tried everything, it doesn’t work. Is there any other solution?
Just thought I’d chime in.. but I had the same problem using a Contact form on the Boldy Theme, and my host.
When creating a new e-mail address I have a checkbox that says “(Check this box to set the new email as default “From” address for emails sent from scripts in your hosting account)”.
After creating a new address on my server with this option my contact box works great! : )
If you have this hosting option it should help you out.
Thanks a lot, was stuck with this in a client project and found this just in time
Thanks a billion.
It worked like a charm.
My site hosting is yahoo.
Just to confirm that this worked also with yahoo hosting.
Thanks,
Riti