Troubleshooting

This chapter describes some common problems, and their likely solutions. Use this chapter to diagnose and solve problems you may have with Interspire Email Marketer.

If you are not sure what effects a certain troubleshooting action will have, contact the relevant administrator or service provider, or get in touch with customer support. Make all configuration changes at your own risk!

Note: If you cannot perform a task that you think you should be able to, the most likely reason is that your user account does not have the required privileges. Before you take any other steps, use the Users & Groups screens (see Users & Groups), or check with your organization’s Interspire Email Marketer administrator.

General Problems

If Interspire Email Marketer is not working correctly (in a manner not explained elsewhere in this chapter), many problems can be solved by doing one or both of the following:

Check Interspire Email Marketer’s permissions: Interspire Email Marketer’s components require certain permissions in order for it to function correctly. To check that all components have the required permissions, click Tools in the toolbar, then click Check permissions. See Checking Permissions for more information.
Update to a newer version of Interspire Email Marketer: when a known issue with Interspire Email Marketer is discovered, it is fixed by Interspire engineers. The fixed version is then released as an update which you can install. To check to see if updates are available, click Tools in the toolbar, then click Check for update. See Checking For Updates for more information.

I Forgot My Password

Go to the login screen (see Logging In to Interspire Email Marketer).
Click the Forgot your password? link.
In the screen that displays, enter your Username.
Click Send email. An email is sent to the email address associated with your username in Interspire Email Marketer. Follow the instructions in the email.

I Can’t Send Emails

You may have exceeded the mail quota imposed by your host. This limits the number of emails you may send in a specific period. Check with your host if you are unsure.
Your host may require that the emails you send have a particular From or Return‐Path (bounce) address, or a specific domain name (for example, any account @exampledomain.com). Check with your host.
Your server’s IP address may have been blacklisted. This can happen if emails from the server appear to be spam. You can use an online service to check whether your server’s IP is blacklisted, for example the Anti‐Abuse Project’s multi‐RBL (Real‐time BlackList) check, at the following URL:

https://www.anti-abuse.org/multi-rbl-check/

If you are using a third‐party SMTP server, check to ensure that your server, login and port details are correct. Also, ensure that you are allowed to make connections to remote servers on the desired port. Firewall restrictions on outgoing connections may disallow the fsockopen PHP function.

I Can’t Import Contacts From a CSV File

You may not have permission to upload contacts from a CSV file. To change a user’s permissions, use the Export contacts to a file checkbox in the User accounts > Edit > User permissions screen.
Your CSV file may be incompatibly formatted. Check the CSV formatting to ensure that it can be read by Interspire Email Marketer. Check that the information in your CSV file is correctly formatted:
- Each entry must be on a new line; one line of details per contact.
- There must be no blank lines.
- The number of fields in each contact’s entry must be consistent.

Note: Make sure you are using a CSV file and not an Excel (or other spreadsheet) file.

Your CSV file may contain information that breaches Interspire Email Marketer’s content type rules. For example, if some of the email address with which you want to populate Email address fields in your contact list do not follow a correct email address convention, the data may be rejected.
Your CSV file may be too large. Break the file into two halves and upload both.
PHP on the Interspire Email Marketer server may be in safe mode. Check with your server administrator.

Bounced Email Processing Isn’t Working, Or Is Working Erratically

Bear in mind that for bounce processing to work, Interspire Email Marketer must have access to the bounced emails. If you manually download the bounced emails from the email server before Interspire Email Marketer accesses them, they cannot be processed by Interspire Email Marketer.
If you received an error relating to certificates, click Settings > Email settings. Look at the Default bounce settings section and ensure that Use extra mail settings and Do not validate server certificate are selected (checked).

Note: If you are not using the default bounce settings, check that the same settings are configured in the relevant Edit contact list screen.

If you have set up the same bounce settings for multiple contact lists, make sure that the settings are correct in each list that uses the same server for bounce processing. If the settings are incorrect in one list, all lists using that server are adversely affected.

OAuth Bounce Processing v8.7.2

If you’re using Google OAuth for bounce processing and experiencing issues:

Large volumes taking too long: Version 8.7.2 includes an 80% performance improvement for OAuth bounce processing. If you’re on an older version, consider upgrading.
Processing stops after first batch: Version 8.7.2 fixes an issue where manual processing would stop after the first chunk of messages.
Manual UI not responding: Clear your browser cache and try again. The new AJAX-based processing may conflict with cached versions of the interface.

Cron Isn’t Working

Ensure that cron is enabled in the Settings > Cron jobs screen.
Ensure that the cron job is correctly configured; for example, ensure that it is set to use the full path, for example:

/usr/bin/php -f /path/to/iem/admin/cron/cron.php

and not

/path/to/iem/admin/cron/cron.php

Ensure that the email or autoresponder send, or bounce processing, is not set to run more frequently than the cron job on your server.
If you are a Windows user, ensure that Scheduled tasks are set to run frequently enough.
Ensure that your cron job is set to use the correct path to PHP.

I Can’t Edit Forms / I Receive “Internal Server 500” Errors

You may experience this problem if your server has mod_security enabled. Check with your server administrator. Alternatively, disable mod_security by adding an .htaccess file to Interspire Email Marketer’s root directory, including the following:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
# Turn off mod_security filtering.
SecFilterEngine Off
# The below probably isn't needed, but better safe than sorry.
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

I Can’t Save Campaigns, Autoresponders, or Other Settings

Make sure your user permissions allow you to perform the desired action. Check with the Interspire Email Marketer administrator in your organization, or check the User accounts > Edit > User permissions screen.
Make sure that you have the permissions necessary to write to the Interspire Email Marketer server’s ~/admin/includes/config.php file and the ~/admin/temp/ folder (and all sub‐folders). If you are unsure, check with your host.

I’m Having Trouble with the WYSIWYG (HTML) Editor

Check that the HTML code you are using is valid. You can use an online service such as the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML validator tool, available at the following URL:

https://validator.w3.org/

Make sure that the browser you are using to edit your template, email or autoresponder does not have the Skype toolbar or Skype add‐on installed. If you have any of these installed, disable or uninstall them. They can adversely affect the HTML code in the editor.

I Want to Change the Time Zone

If you want to change the time zone of an individual user, see User Settings.
If you want to change Interspire Email Marketer’s core time zone, you must edit the Interspire Email Marketer database. The setting is located in the email_config_settings table. Contact your server’s administrator. Alternatively, perform the following SQL query to reconfigure the core time zone:

UPDATE email_config_settings SET areavalue="GMT+HH:MM" WHERE area="SERVERTIMEZONE";

where HH:MM defines the number of hours (HH) and minutes (MM) after Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Note: Interspire Email Marketer does not make allowance for daylight savings time and other such regional variations. If you want to make changes for such variations, repeat the process above, modifying “GMT+HH:MM” to reflect the change.

I Want to Add a Contact to Multiple Contact Lists

You cannot add a contact to multiple lists at once using the Interspire Email Marketer interface. However, you can create a website form that allows a user to join multiple contact lists in the single submission.

Click Forms > Create website form.
Select multiple contact lists in the Contact lists/custom fields section.
Ensure that the List choices field appears in the Change field order (drag & drop) section. See Creating and Editing Forms.

IP Banning Not Working v8.7.2

If IP banning (see Security Settings) is not working correctly, or if IP addresses are showing incorrectly, this can be caused by several issues:

PHP 8.0+ Compatibility

Version 8.7.2 includes fixes for IP banning compatibility with PHP 8.0 and later. If you’re running PHP 8.0+ and IP banning isn’t working, upgrade to version 8.7.2 or later.

Behind Proxy/Load Balancer

If your installation is behind a reverse proxy, load balancer, or CDN, IP banning may not work correctly because the system sees the proxy’s IP address instead of the real client IP. This can also cause all requests to show the same IP address.

To fix this, enable proxy header support by adding the following to your ~/admin/includes/config.php file:

define('SENDSTUDIO_TRUST_PROXY_HEADERS', true);

This enables support for X-Forwarded-For and X-Real-IP headers.

For more information, see Configuration File Settings.

Verifying IP Banning

To verify that IP banning is working correctly:

Check the login_failures table in your database to verify that failed login attempts are being recorded
Test by intentionally failing login attempts from a test IP address to ensure the IP gets banned as expected

RSS Feed Issues v8.7.2

If you’re experiencing issues with RSS feeds:

RSS Feeds Disabled : In version 8.7.2 and later, RSS feeds are disabled by default for security. You must enable them in Settings > Security Settings > Enable RSS Feeds if you need this functionality.
Duplicate Newsletters: Version 8.7.2 fixes an issue where newsletters sent to multiple lists would appear as duplicates in RSS feeds. After upgrading, duplicate entries should no longer appear.
Emoji Not Displaying: Version 8.7.2 includes fixes for emoji Unicode sequences not displaying properly in RSS feeds. Emoji characters should now render correctly.