So in my switch, I discovered a problem that others should know about. If you use a BluDomain template, most likely your Contact section is designed like mine. When a client enters his/her email address, the PHP code tries to send the email from the entered client email through your server. GoDaddy and HostGator actually block certain domains as Spam including gmail.com, yahoo.com, and a couple others.

Sorry this is getting technical, but it is important because your client may be filling out the client info form on your Blu website and then the mail is actually rejected because of a spam block.

I had to manually go and edit the code to get it working for GoDaddy and HostGator. Other hosts could be effected by this too. I'm sure I didn't explain this well enough, but hopefully that made sense.

If you want to find out if it effects you, fill out your own contact form with the email address as something@gmail.com, something@yahoo.com, something@hotmail.com, something@live.com, etc... and make sure all of them go through.

Hope this helps someone. Wish I had known this before since I am sure a few clients think I am non-responsive because of me not getting their contact info.

you know its funny you mention this... i host with blu, but the other day i was testing my contact form and i did not put in a valid email address and i got the wierdest thing - the email said it was from: <fff@server.bludomain3.com>

wierd huh?

If you don't put in an email address, it is setup to send the email from your email address.

If anyone finds out they are effected by this, I have some code mods you can do that get around the issue. I've been testing them a good amount today and it has been working well.

That is a good reminder for all of us to check our own. I checked mine, (not blue or godaddy) and all the different addresses work. Thanks for the reminder to check.

Since I already got a PM about this. I will post the "easiest" fix and a "better fix" in my opinion.

MAKE SURE TO BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL FILE BEFORE EDITING! To be extra safe you can comment out the old code instead of deleting it. To comment out PHP code put // in front of the line.

With Blu, go in to the folder "admin/flash/"
Open up sendmail.php with a text editor (not Word).

For the easy fix, find this code:



Add the following above it:


That will make the "From" address be what you put above. However, when hitting Reply in your mail program it won't work since it will just reply to the forms@yourdomain.com address.

If you want to be able to use the Reply feature, you have to make some more mods.

Here is a more complicated fix, but allows the reply feature to work.

Replace this(comment these 2 lines out):


With this (add this code):



Also replace the first instance of this:



with this:


If you have any questions, let me know.

This sounds like a Blu issue. I don't use Blu and my contact form works fine from a GMail email address (or any others) on HostGator.

It all depends on how it is set up. If the "From: " header field comes from one of those domains, when you use the mail() function in PHP, it won't go through.

I'd have to see how the ProPhoto2 theme does it. If it is just a standard form submit, then it may be ok.

I just sent you a message using yours Tristan.

When you open up the email and click show details, does the From: field have my email or another email?


Update: Apparently Blu has encoded the sendmail.php file in some of the other templates. In that case, I think you have to contact Blu and get them to make the change. Good luck....

Unless someone knows how to decode the Blu code.

Chis, the FROM: field has your email address.

I swear, I hear about more problems with BluDomain than any other company on here. Either their hosting sucks (which doesn't suprise me becaue they use IXWebhosting) or their templates are riddled with bad faulty code, or their customer support is unresponsive.

I frankly don't know how they can stay in business.

Maybe because it is a Form action versus a PHP mail() function. I don't know. I know HostGator blocked mine this morning before I made those mods. here is the error message I got (I removed my emails to avoid any spamming from posting here):

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

companyemail@gmail.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<mymainemail@gmail.com>:
host gateway.websitewelcome.com [74.52.222.242]:
553 5.5.4 I was unable to send this e-mail because the domain ( gmail.com ) has been black listed due to spam or forgery.

Oh great. I just tested and they are not getting through for me. I wonder how many jobs I have missed out on becuase of this. Of course I don't understand any of this so it will probably take me forever to get it fixed. Ugh!

I would just like to say that I sent a support ticket to Blu and this problem was fixed for me within 10 minutes. I know people are always dogging on blu but I just got some great CS and thought I would give them a little love.

What did they do? Have you make the changes Chris mentions above, or something else?

Mine seems to be working fine, thou my outlook does send them to a spam folder, i check it anyhow.

Holy crap! I just tried mine out and none of them came through! I've had this site for over a year, how many jobs have I missed because of this?! Needless to say I'm super ticked about this.

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention; I never would have known there was an issue if you hadn't posted this.

Since I fixed my website (less than 48 hours ago) I got 3 inquiries. Geez.... makes me want to cry thinking how many people emailed us and never heard back.

For what it's worth I host with HostGator (Blu designed my site) and I just tried the domains listed below on my contact form. The only anomaly I noticed was that when I used testing@live.com my inbox said the message came from "testing@gator259.hostgator.com." Not sure why, but Live is Hotmail as far as I was aware and Hotmail messages have been coming through (I've been in back and forth emails with a bride who is sending from a Hotmail address. Fingers crossed.)

Uh oh....Chris opened a can of worms!



Good call smart one.

I believe you may have just solved a ton of peoples problems that they didn't know they had. This needs to be blasted to every living photographer on the planet. Can you imagine how many accumulated jobs have been lost?

It only affects people who used BluDomain.

Just a quick update. I contacted Blu and they fixed it ASAP. I would say it was less then 2 hours that I received a reply.

Still, this should have never been an issue and when it was discovered we should have been notified. Thanks again, Chris, for letting us know, you have no idea how much I appreciate it!

Thanks a bunch for the heads-up! Turns out I was affected too.

They said they made some changes to my site and I checked it and now it works. I have no idea what they actually did.