Email Users v4.6.0 released

This morning I released version 4.6.0 of Email Users.  This release addresses the problems with addresses appearing in the CC header instead of the BCC header which cropped up in v4.5.4 and v4.5.5.  This version has gone through quite a bit of testing to ensure the problem with addresses was fixed.  In addition to this critical fix, there are also a couple of minor new features now available.  If you were running Email Users v4.6.0-beta-4, this version is nearly identical.  The version is different and the default string for the new footer was trimmed eliminating the version number.

  • Significantly improved debug functionality to chase down mail header issues.
  • Check added to determine if wp_mail() has been overloaded by a theme or plugin.
  • Rewrite of mailusers_send_mail() fucntion to construct headers as arrays instead of as a single string. The string would sometimes not break correctly and recognize the Bcc: field.
  • Implemented new email footer option.
  • Cleaned up presentation of Options page.
  • Implemented new omit display names option.
  • Updated language translation files.

You can find this update in the WordPress plugin repository or on your Dashboard.

WordPress Google Form v0.58 released

This morning I formally release v0.58 of WordPress Google Form.  Thanks to everyone who did testing of the various beta releases.  The v0.58 release includes a number of improvements to deal with special characters either in responses or in questions.

  1. Fixed bug when radio button and checkbox responses contained apostrophe characters.
  2. Fixed bug when text entry box content contained an ampersand which ended up encoded in the Google sheet.
  3. Fixed bug(s) with plugin settings which are controlled with checkboxes not being able to be unchecked.
  4. Added Reset button to return plugin settings to their default state.
  5. Fixed problem handling newlines (carriage returns) in textarea entries.

You can find the update on your WordPress Dashboard or in the WordPress Plugin Repository.  The released version is functionally the same as beta-3, only the version number is different.

WordPress Google Form v0.58-beta-3 now available

This morning I released beta-3 of WordPress Google Form v0.58.  This update addresses one problem, properly handling newline characters in TEXTAREA entry boxes.  This issue was reported on the WordPress Support Forum.

If there are no more reported issues, I will likely release v0.58 in the next day or so.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )

Email Users v4.6.0-beta-3 now available

If you’ve been following the Email Users Support Forum, you are aware that for the past couple of days I have been chasing a bug which affects some users and places all of their intended recipient email addresses in the CC header instead of the BCC header.

This has been a challenging bug to find as it doesn’t happen on any of the systems I have access to.  Fortunately I had a few users affected by this problem willing to help me and I appreciate their assistance.  I am not sure how I would resolved this problem without their assistance.  Again, thanks.

So what was the problem?  The WordPress wp_mail() API allows you to pass extra header information as part of the mail content.  Email Users makes use of this by constructing a BCC header which contains all of the email addresses for the intended recipients.  The wp_mail() function supports headers as a single string or an array of headers, each header as an array element.

Up until this evening Email Users had constructed all email headers as a string.  With a large number of email addresses this string could end up being very long.  However, I don’t believe the length of the string had anything to do with the problem.

When wp_mail() receives headers as a string, it tries to intelligently decompose them.  In some cases it appears that the string wasn’t splitting correctly which means the BCC field wasn’t ever seen.  The “Bcc:” text became part of an email address which was subsequently discarded because it resulted in a bad address.

Email Users v4.6.0 has a rewrite of the mailusers_send_mail() function plus some new debug functionality which helps resolve these sorts of issues.  Additionally, the new debug is under user control so can be turned on and off as needed.

Email Users Beta (4997 downloads )

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For testing this new version, I recommend turning Debug on until you’re comfortable with the the structure of the email addresses.

Questions or comments -don’t hesitate to ask.

Debugging the Email Users CC issue

For the past few days I have been chasing a reported issue where Email Users is putting recipient addresses into the CC header instead of the BCC header.  This has been a challenge to chase down.  To assist in this I have add a bunch of  new debug and checking to Email Users.

Email  Users will now check and report if wp_mail() has been overloaded by a plugin or theme.  Since wp_mail() is a pluggable function, this is the one area which is really out of the control of Email Users.  Simply knowing if wp_mail() has been overloaded is very helpful.

Additionally, I have finally found a way to initiate a complete email which is aborted just prior to the email actually being sent.  The content of several internal structures is displayed on the Dashboard so the email headers can easily be examined.

This build is in DEBUG mode which means it will never actually send an email unless wp_mail() has been overloaded in which case all bets are off.  Please visit the Settings page first to determine if wp_mail() has been overloaded.  If it has, do not send any email but let me know which plugin or theme has overloaded wp_mail().

Email Users Beta (4997 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.58-beta-2 available

I have just released beta-2 of WordPress Google Form v0,58.  This update addresses a couple of significant issues, notably the inability to disable some of the default options.

The problem with the default settings  based on checkboxes is described pretty well in this article by Devin Price.  I was dealing with the essentially the same problem Devin describes although my solution is slightly different, his solution was helpful in fixing this problem.

While fixing this problem I also added a new Reset button which appears on the Advanced tab.  This Reset button will reset the plugin to use the default settings.

This beta release also includes a fix to address the problem when an ampersand appears in a text box on a multi-page form.  This problem was reported on WordPress Support Forum.

Google Forms Beta (7971 downloads )

wp-SwimTeam v1.4.0-beta-3 available

This morning I resolved my Subversion problems with phpHtmlLib and have posted v1.40 beta 3 of wp-SwimTeam.  This release cleans up the Roster Export functionality which had become cumbersome as more formats were added.  Instead of multiple choices from the dropdown menu, there is a single choice (Export Roster) which brings up a new form which allows the user some control over how much of the roster is exported and in what format(s).

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This release is dependent on an update to phpHtmlLib so make sure you update it before loading this beta version.  You must be running phpHtmlLib v2.6.7 or later for this new Export Roster functionality to work correctly.

wp-SwimTeam Beta (2257 downloads ) Email Users Beta (4997 downloads )

Email Users v4.5.3-beta-4 now available

This morning I pushed out beta-4 for Email Users v.4.5.3.  This latest update addresses the duplicate header information discovered by Andy Fragen.  I had already fixed the problem with the TO header Andy noted but was unaware of the duplicate MIME-Version header.  It turns out, there was also a duplicate X-Mailer header as well.

By default wp_mail() sits on top of PHPMailer.  WordPress does not check for either the MIME-Version header nor the X-Mailer header.  Unless specifically set, PHPMailer will add its default values for these two headers which is what was happening.  It appears that some systems are sensitive to duplicate headers and reject the messages and others do not.  This definitely explains why it is difficult to reproduce reports that come in of users not receiving email.

Because wp_mail() is pluggable, other mail implementations may be expecting these headers to continue to exist.  What I have done is added two new options to add the headers as Email Users has been doing all along.  By default these two options are off because PHPMailer duplicates them and I expect most people use the default WordPress implementation.

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I also improved the information panel I added recently to report the existance of any filters which may interact with Email Users.  For the most part these filters don’t do any harm however they can change override the FROM information in the email or the format which may be unexpected. The new information in the panel is nothing more than a note that something else may be affecting your email outside of Email Users (e.g. why is my From name different than what I set?).

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Please report any issues with this latest beta update.

Email Users Beta (4997 downloads )

Email Users v4.5.3-beta-3 now available

This afternoon I posted the third beta release of Email Users v4.5.3.  There is a pretty significant change in this build so I may bump to v4.6 when I release it.

Yesterday I posted an article about an odd Email Users problem I was looking at.  This build fixes (correctly) the problem encountered by that user by properly using get_users() instead of a complex SQL query to retrieve the information used to construct the User Settings page.

In addition to being properly constructed, the User Settings page has a number of fixes including proper sorting and the addition of Search (which I could never get working using the old query).

I’ve also addressed a couple of other very minor requests that came up recently in the WordPress Support Forum.

Email Users Beta (4997 downloads )

A Really Odd Email Users Problem

I was recently contacted about an Email Users issue on a site that is using bbPress and S2Member.  The person had come to the conclusion that there was some sort of conflict between the three plugins which resulted in the Email Users -> Users Settings screen being empty and asked me to look into it.

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Clearly something is amiss as in order to access the WordPress Dashboard you need to login and in order to login, there needs to be at least one user!  This isn’t the sort of situation I can easily replicate.  Fortunately the person with this problem provided me access to their server so we could do some debugging.

The functionality in Email Users is based on the WP_List_Table class and an example plugin which you can find in the WordPress Plugin Repository.  When I first implemented it I was retrieving the list of users with a call to get_users() however I never got the sorting working correctly.  After playing around with it for a while, I gave up and wrote my own query.  The query I wrote yielded the results and sorting I wanted so I didn’t think much about it.  Until today.

This the query that WordPress generates and sends to MySQL:


SELECT ID, display_name, user_email, user_login, m1.meta_value first_name, m2.meta_value last_name, m3.meta_value massemail, m4.meta_value notifications
FROM wp_users u
LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta m1 ON (m1.user_id = u.ID AND m1.meta_key = 'first_name')
LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta m2 ON (m2.user_id = u.ID AND m2.meta_key = 'last_name')
LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta m3 ON (m3.user_id = u.ID AND m3.meta_key = 'email_users_accept_mass_emails')
LEFT JOIN wp_usermeta m4 ON (m4.user_id = u.ID AND m4.meta_key = 'email_users_accept_notifications')
ORDER BY last_name ASC LIMIT 0,100

What this query does is select all of the WordPress User Ids, first names, and last names, which have the proper Email Users user meta keys. The data is returned and stored in a format which can be rendered in the List Table.

Because the table was empty, I wanted to see what the results of the query were as that would tell me where the issue might be.  Because I had access to the MySQL database via phpMyAdmin, I was able to run the query directly against MySQL.  When I did so, this is what I found:

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This certainly was unexpected but it explained why the List Table was empty.  I have never run into this sort of problem, in fact, I had never heard of either the SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE or the SQL_BIG_SELECTS MySQL system variables.

I was able to alter SQL_BIG_SELECTS using the following SQL:


SET SQL_BIG_SELECTS=1

When I did this and re-ran the query, phpMyAdmin returned the results I would have expected to see.  This was good news – it appears this users problem is due to a MySQL setting.  The bad news is sometimes it is hard to change these settings and it isn’t something I thought I could add to the query itself.

As a test, I modified the source for one of Email Users files so it was calling the original method I had coded  based on get_users() to see if it would work and it did.  This is very good news as I suspect fixing the sorting issue (or living with it) will be easier than changing the MySQL system variable settings.

My next step is to see if I can fix the sorting problem and roll out an update.