A hive-mind question: the contact forms in Blocs 4.5.5 are broken. I use InMotionHosting.com as my ISP, and tech support there reports that it’s a PHP/SMTP problem. It would be lovely to raise this as a tech support question to Blocs itself, but the avenues I find all point either to this forum or to FAQs, as if to say, Kindly don’t bother us.
Anyway, I’m disinclined to spend the money to upgrade to Blocs 5 unless the problem—and it seems to lie within Blocs 4, from what I’m able to tell—has been fixed there.
I’m on Blocs 5 and forms have been fine under Sonoma or Sequoia. What OS version are you using? PHP version on the server?
If you haven’t done so already I would run a test and ask your web host to check the logs and pinpoint exactly where it is going wrong. Simply saying forms are broken isn’t really enough detail. If you file a report add as much information as possible.
I’ve sent another note to my ISP. Here’s hoping. If this doesn’t work I’ll abandon the Blocs form and just use the old gm +ATSIGN gregorymcnamee.com slug on the contact page. Thanks again for your help—appreciate your taking the time.
So here’s what comes back: I need to add a server to my Blocs page. But apparently there’s no way to do that with Blocs4, so as I’m reading it I need to spend a fair chunk of money on an upgrade that I need only for that purpose.
Or is there some hidden way to add a mail server in Blocs4?
No, it has PhP, but SMTP has to be manually configured. If you look at this page, this appears to be simple. However, this also appears to apply just to Blocs5—there’s no “post type” in Blocs4. So my question is, is there a way to get to a “post type” setting in Blocs4, or do I have to upgrade to Blocs5?
SMTP forms was a featured added in Blocs 5. (Long overdue)
So if you went that method in Blocs 4, yes you will need to manually add it.
PHP Mail is the older method in Blocs, many hosts are disabling that though. Which may be the situation in your case, and if so, leaves you either creating your own, or updating to Blocs 5 to automate it.
You can easily do it with a bit of ChatGPT to walk you through it though.
All right. I’ve upgraded, and it’s still not working. My ISP reports that everything is set up properly on that end. Here are my settings—can anyone tell me if this looks correct?
Is the Blocs 5 built-in form missing something that the ISP needs? I’ve spent hours on this and am about ready to go back to plan Z, just listing a cut-and-paste email address and abandoning the form.
Sending mail is unfortunately no longer so easy.
SPAM and hacks are forcing providers to demand more regulation. A simple PHP mail() usually no longer works. If it works with mail(), that’s not a good sign…
For this reason there is the PHPMailer extension which is also used by BLOCS.
This allows mail to be sent somewhat better with PHP. There are several others.
When you export your website, there is a folder “includes” in the export folder. This contains a folder “PHPMailer” and next to it a file with the extension *.php. The name is normally identical to your form or the form page.
This file ultimately contains the information that PHPMailer uses and obviously has problems with. If you black out/remove the line with “$smtp_password=” and tell us the rest, we may be able to see or test more.
Could side stepping the whole issue and just use an obfuscated mailto link be an option? As your contact for seems quite simple and doesn’t have a load of special fields to worry about.