mail() problem when sending to AOL?

Anon

I am using the php mail() function and everything works fine in that I can send to everyone on the Internet EXCEPT AOL users.

Does anyone know why?

David

dmcinnis

I figured it out. In case anyone is interested, it appears that certain email servers do a reverse dns lookup of the smtp gateway before accepting email for delivery. Since I did not have a reverse record in by DNS (bad boy) AOL was rejecting any email originating from my server. Not a mail() glitch.

fuman

So David, any way to fix this problem without direct access to gateways?

dmcinnis

Yes. make sure that you have a reverse record in your dns. Your dns admin should know how to do this.

shellyw

I have a bit of a different problem...I CAN send text/html formatted messages everywhere to include AOL. I can read the test messages via Outlook Express and Netscape, but not on AOL. On AOL, I get the FROM:, TO: and Subject ok, but the text is received as follows:

--Marker3c9ace7811809
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

SG9vdGVyIENydWIz...and many lines of this stuff

Anyone know a solution?

Thanks,
Shelly

Anon

Hi David,

I happened to see this posting of yours as a chance. And believe me, it's helped me one great bit. I was facing an identical problem and my webhost refused to take the blame. I think your posting hits the nail on the head.

Thanks once again

Nilesh

Anon

Hi Shelly,

I think the headers are not being sent properly. For example what you've shown should be an attachment, while there is no content-disposition. I think you need to get the headers right.

Outlook at times accepts a lot of things which may not follow the rules.

Regards

Nilesh