Hi guyz.
I really need help on this issue. If some of you have come across the following problem please let me know if you solved it and how.
The thing is I'm sending some HTML mail messages to a lot of users. Everyone gets the mail okay, be it rich text or HTML. All except for AOL users who get the HTML as an attachment to a blank email message.
Also the same users that are getting my emails as attachments, are also getting other HTML mails that show correctly.
Now I know I'm using the right set of headers because i've been using the same headers for a long time (about 3 years now) and I did not encounter this problem so far. Or it was not reported to me so far.
If there is anyone that has come across this and has any ideas on how to avoid it, please post back.
Thanx
Hi, welcome to these forums! :)
If there is anyone that has come across this ...No
... and has any ideas on how to avoid it, please post back.Ask some AOL user you sent the mail to for a version of your html-mail (with headers!!) and a version of another html-message (which did work) and compare them: look if there's something different and then maybe modify your code if needed...
hth
Hi, and thanx for the welcome.
I wish it were that easy, but those people are customers of an online service and the email I'm sending is a weekly newsletter. So it's a bit weird for me to ask a customer to work with me on a thing I should provide them with ... you know!
So unfortunatelly, the question still stands :(
Thanx
I believe AOL mail has a problem rendering HTML messages. Keep it simple and include all headers. Better still, send plain text... safer, everybody can read it and doesn't eat your bandwidth too much if you have many subscribers.
Hi
Mirax's idea should work for you, but even then you still face the chance that the messages you get to test against why yours do not work could also be wrong!
I see thousands of messages a day, and let me tell you, very few follow the mime standards, most are coding errors, but many MTA's and Mail Servers and mail clients are also to blame! You might say, "Why Should I Care, As Long As My Mail Is Sent", well that will get your message sent for now, but by 2005 most mail server and MTA's will have in place the new strict mime messaging rules, that are designed to stop mail being sent that does not compile to mime standards!
Why not post your mail code here, so we can have a look at it!
F!
Thanx for the reply, but the directive from "above" was to send HTML. The bandwidth is not a problem at all.
I have gone thru the AOL Unofficial FAQ List and found something but that dealt with sending HTML/RTF/plain text messages. So there is not much help in that.
So I have to stick to HTML and I cannot ask for emails the users got in HTML and showed correctly.
Also I was told that on AOL a few of my mails got thru correctly. So i'm thinking of a bug or something. Considering I send mails from a cron i setup on the server, I think it could be a weird something with the fact that a few hundred mails are being sent in a very short time. However I also have a VERY powerful mail server (it's a dedicated dual P4@2400 MHz with a load of bandwidth). But who knows?!?
Anyway if that were the case, why do all other mail clients get the headers right? There's just too many IFs in this one and it's kind of frustrating.
I have already tried out a dozen or so tests with lots of headers and also tried to time out the script for 1 second between sends. But it's the same.
Any other ideas?
Thanx!
I've had the same sort of issue. However, i've been sending plain text emails and they've come out weird for AOL users.
It seems to print all the headers in the email and make it look some what distasteful!
I've never managed to work out what the problem was. It's probably AOL's way of dealing with email from outside of it's network.
It's not much use what i've written, but i'm guessing it's something to do with the way AOL handles the email headers.
David
I dislike AOL and Microsoft. Just a general point. :-)
IIRC, AOL can handle RTF as well as hyperlinks in its mail client.
This means that you can send messages with hyperlinks, and basic formatting such as bold and italics.
However, sending HTML to an AOL email address is essentially a non-started.
Most commercial bulk-email applications filter AOL email addresses as such, to prevent the sender from transmitting an HTML email to an AOL email address.
Moved this from the PHP forum (since this isn't a PHP issue) to the Website Promotion forum (seemed most appropriate).
Thanx for the input guyz! I really appreciate it!
It seems I'm fighting for a lost cause :(
I will keep struggling to find a fix or some sort of a hack for this issue. If I finally do ... i'll be sure to post it around here somewhere.
Oh and ... I've never used devshed.com before but I'll be sure to use it in the future. From all the boards I've been or am a member of, this is the richest in content and has the fastest replies I've ever encountered.
You can evem qoute me on that if you like :p :D
Once again thanx!
First post...
I had a similar problem when sending from an ASP CDO mail object, I just had to set the SMTP server for the mail object. Evidently AOL has some kind of address validation that requires a very valid reply address (yes, there are degrees of address validity :-)).
But now I have a new question? Sort of in the same line, but I don't know if it needs a new post. Here goes:
I'm sending HTML email forms to AOL clients, and when they submit them to a processing page there is no header at all. Therefore, I'm losing all my form variables. Everything is shown right in the AOL email window, I've checked the HTML source and all the code is in order right up to submission. And of course the form works in all the other email browsers.
Thanks guys, let me know if this is the wrong forum.
sprockincat
Hi All
I came across similiar problems. AOL is notorious for discarding email (expecially html based) if it does not conform to their standards.
Check this page for guidlines
http://postmaster.info.aol.com/guidelines/html.html
I have know for email to be discarded if they contain links that aol may suspect are spam