PHPBB3 hack to get correct mail headers
ed. This has been tested and amended to include v3.04, v3.05, v3.06 of PHPBB3
I use PHPBB3 for my niche forums that I own. It’s powerful open source software, and I highly recommend it.
However on certain servers the emails that the PHPBB3 software sends out have incomplete header information. Now in PHPBB3 defense they do specify all the header information in their code, but it’s only on certain server configurations that you need to go one extra step further. Hopefully one day they will add this to their core code.
Here is the problem, the return-path and envelope-from fields are not marked with the forum email address. They are marked with the servers nobody email address.
Return-path: < nobody@server.com >
Envelope-to: user@forumuser.com
Delivery-date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:22:21 +1000
Received: from nobody by server.com with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from < nobody@server.com >)
id 1Lq4tB-0000vz-FW
for user@forumuser.com; Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:22:21 +1000
What this means is that any bounce messages will go to the server admin (if they are even looking) and not back to the individual PHPBB3 board administrator for them to take action on it.
Unfortunately a core code hack is required to fix this, and this will need to be re-applied each time PHPBB3 has an upgrade. But it’s only a couple of lines of code, so it’s easy.
You want to edit the /includes/functions_messenger.php file…
Find this code (there are 2 instances of this code to change in v3.04, v3.05 and 1 instance of this code in v3.06)
ob_start(); $result = $config['email_function_name']($mail_to, mail_encode($this->subject), wordwrap(utf8_wordwrap($this->msg), 997, "\n", true), $headers); $err_msg = ob_get_clean();
and make it this code
ob_start(); $result = $config['email_function_name']($mail_to, mail_encode($this->subject), wordwrap(utf8_wordwrap($this->msg), 997, "\n", true), $headers, "-f" . $config['board_email']); $err_msg = ob_get_clean();
What that does is add in the 5th parameter to the PHP sendmail function which is for specifying the return-path and envelope-from fields.
Now your output will look like this
Return-path: < forumadmin@messageboard.com >
Envelope-to: user@forumuser.com
Delivery-date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:33:17 +1000
Received: from nobody by server.com with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from < forumadmin@messageboard.com >)
id 1Lq53l-000177-Nx
for user@forumuser.com; Sat, 04 Apr 2009 22:33:17 +1000
and any bounces or PHPBB3 sent email issues will come back to you personally and not your hosting server admin.
Aaron
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7 Comments On “PHPBB3 hack to get correct mail headers”
Aaron on
on April 6, 2009 at 11:34 am
Sorry about that, I had not put the code into Wordpress properly and it had mangled the quotes.
The code is now able to be copy and pasted straight from this blog post.
Aaron
Martin on
on April 20, 2009 at 10:07 am
Thanks for the tip
Scott on
on September 7, 2009 at 7:27 am
Thanks for documenting this! Anyone aware if a formal feature request is in place to make this a configurable option in phpBB 3?
Aaron on
on September 15, 2009 at 7:12 am
@Scott Not sure haven’t looked for ages, but until then at least you have a fix.
Aaron
Aaron Dwyer on
on December 29, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I’ve just upgraded to v3.06 of PHPBB3. They still haven’t included this adjustment to the core code.
The fix still needs to be applied, however the core code has changed in v3.06, and there is only one instance of the code to change.
Aaron
John Osmond on
on January 30, 2010 at 10:21 am
Hi Aaron. Thanks for the hack it worked great for me.
One thing I noticed is that you have an extra $this->msg where my code has simply $msg. I didn’t change it. I simply added “, “-f” . $config['board_email'] to the existing line and did not do a full copy and paste.
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when applying this hack and using the moderator function to allow a post i get an error
Warning: Unexpected character in input: ‘\’ (ASCII=92) state=1 in /home/domain/forum/includes/functions_messenger.php on line 411
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/domain/forum/includes/functions_messenger.php on line 411