Email Notifications Not Working

url -- : www.pleasantviewcampgroundandcabins.com/...r-categories-listing
HikaShop version -- : Free
Joomla version -- : 2.5.8
PHP version -- : 5.2
Browser(s) name and version -- : Firefox 24.1.0
Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) : Error_message

We run a campground and are hoping to use HikaShop to process online registratiosn. When a order/reservation is made we expected to get an email with the necessary information to complete the order and send out email confirmations. We am currently using the HikaShop credit card payment plugin so that we can process the requests on our system and make sure there aren't any overlap dates for the facility requests.

We were test driving the site and actually had people utilizing it without knowing it. We actually had to take the page down because we had 5 orders placed and we didn't get notifications so people arrived at our facility and didn't have reservations. I am attaching a screen print of my settings in hopes someone can help me figure out why I am not being notified when an order/reservation is made/confirmed.

I was able to turn off the Email Order Notification to the customer by going to hikashop_config table via phpmyadmin and changing the entry order_creation_notification.published entry to 0.

Once I can get everything running correctly we plan to purchase the Business Edition so that we can add a "arrival date" and "departure date" to the checkout process.

I am new to this so please be very explicit in your responses since my knowledge about all of this is very limited.

Thanks for your help.

Just seeing you had no reply yet. Well, support is both slightly 'distracted' (see note at top of page) and busy, so patience is in order

First, it's not clear from your post if your system sends any mails at all. Did your customers get the notifications? You said people arrived "and didn't have reservations" - could mean they didn't get any mail, either.
In that case, check if Joomla sends mails. You don't have user registration or even only a contact form, so you may want to install something like that temporarily to test.

Next, once Joomla sends other mails, but HikaShop notifications don't work: As per documentation, best leave "Bounce address" empty, and set "Add names" to "no". Might not help, but just in case your ISP's mail server doesn't like your present settings.

Finally, commercial HikaShop versions give you much more control over emails, so you won't need to go into the database to turn them on or off - you can publish or unpublished each one through the backend UI.

Thanks for your reply.

I do have user registration and used it to test the system.

Yes, 1/'2 of the emails are working correctly, even thought I thought I set it up not to.
Customers are getting email confirmations. So some of the emails are working correctly.

I tried making the changes you suggested but it still did not notify me when an order was placed. Any other thoughts or suggestions?

BTW...We are on board with purchasing the full package but we need to know that it will work correctly. If we have problems with it after we purchase it can it be returned/refunded?

Sorry to hear.

Which HikaShop version are you using? "Free" is not a version number, but you should be able to tell from the file name which you installed, or from what "Update" tells you in the shop's backend.
Frankly, and that's maybe just me, with some working and some not, some changes you made in the guts of the system and some not, to me it sounds like you'd be best off with re-installing the shop extension. A new start, so to speak, and at the opportunity with the newest version and carefully going through the settings with the documentation in hand and an eagle eye also on relevant parameters involving order statuses etc. Eventually even after first uninstalling the present one, though IMHO this shouldn't be necessary.

It works for the rest of us, so it should work for you, no matter if free or paid version. You must have a fairly unique problem you want to get rid of, whatever caused it.

Sorry, I should have specified. HikaShop Starter 2.3.0,
Will re-installing it require me to set everything up again, a lot of work went into the products/categories that I can't afford to lose.

The only change I made was to the email that customers are supposed to get. I did this based on other comments in the forum and the change didn't even work. BTW customers got the email before and after I made that change.

So then, don't uninstall.
Updating, or installing the same or newer version over the present will not delete your categories, products, settings, etc.

One more hint: What's your "Default order status" set to in the backend? Make sure it's "created", because by default that's the status where the admin gets the notification for a new order. If you set it to a later stays like "confirmed" or so, it won't happen unless you modified code.

Thank you for the suggestion of changing "confirmed' to "created" but it still didn't work (see attached).

The only place I show "confirmed" is in the "clean cart when the order is confirmed."

Is it possible that I am not using a plugin that I should be using (see attached)?

As for updating, it says I have the latest version. Would you still suggest I reinstall, and if so how do I do that to avoid losing all of the work I have done?

The core mail functionality is already on board, no extra plugin needed or to be enabled.

Reinstalling might, or might not, fix your problem. I was only thinking of it to make sure all files and database fields are where they belong, etc - just in case. You can do so just like you were installing the first time through the Joomla extension manager. I trust that you'll always perform a backup of both complete server file structure and complete database before doing so.

There is a version 2.3.1 which you'd get by simply downloading HikaShop again from here. According to the changelog, there is nothing relevant for your problem in it, though. Again, the mails you're missing have worked fine long before.
IMHO the only other thing to do is to double-check with your hosting provider and verify that the email settings allow sending mails to yourself, so to speak. After all, web and email domains are different...

On these notes, I - as a user myself - am passing the case on to "official" support, not wanting to inflate the thread any further. As a note to them, the problem in brief is:

"No order_admin_notification emails received after order creation. Customer receives emails, only admin does not. Settings looking very much correct, no relevant mail or other files edited/modified."

Hi,

Thanks to use another value for the option "Default order status", value like "created".
This way you should receive the order created notification emails.

Hey Xavier,

Sorry for extending this discussion further from my end, but this is confusing.

smclaug may try and possibly succeed, but it would make little sense to me why it's required to change the default status to anything different but "created" for the admin to receive notification upon order creation.

Also, I do have it set to "created", and I do receive admin notifications fine then. Guess you'll understand my confusion...

Sorry I was thinking that smclaug had another value than "created" and wanted him to use the "created" value for this option.
But after checking at the code, you can use any status, when an order is created, the email should be sent to the admin.

The email is sent to the admin only for the created order.

Thanks for the clarification, Xavier.
Phew, everything is still as I knew it, haha.

However, not for smclaug: she has all sorts of mails sent out, just not the notification to the admin when the order is created. As I said above for you guys:

"No order_admin_notification emails received after order creation. Customer receives emails, only admin does not. Settings looking very much correct, no relevant mail or other files edited/modified."

Have asked her to verify mail settings with her web host (www domain is different from mail domain - but no answer, yet), but other than that I've run out of ideas what could cause the trouble with that one email type...

My email is on a completely different server than the website is on. I website is hosted thru IPower so my email server is definitely different. I have tested it with my Frontier email too and I still can't get it to work.

As for the suggestion to change to "Default order status", value like "created", where would I do this?

Again, if I reinstall everything will I lose what I have done. I don't back my site up because it is held by a domain. Not sure how I would even back it up. If someone can walk me thru it and then tell me how to upload the files I created I would be willing to try.

Thanks again for everyone's help!

Sara

Hello Sara,

Again, if I reinstall everything will I lose what I have done. I don't back my site up because it is held by a domain. Not sure how I would even back it up. If someone can walk me thru it and then tell me how to upload the files I created I would be willing to try.

By updating HikaShop you won't loose any information. It will just update the files and add new columns in the database if required.
Your views overrides, css overrides, language, configuration, orders, products will stay intact.

But careful if you have modified directly an HikaShop file and you didn't use the backend interface for that....

Note that making a backup is always a good security.