Error 500 when a user submits a comment

[david-unwin]

We have set up that any user comments must be approved before they can be published.
When a user submits a comment, they get a message
Error 500 You must supply at least one recipient email address.
However, the comment does get submitted and the moderators do receive an email about the comment submitted.
Searching the internet, a number of issues came up about PHP mailer with this message. But in our case we do not use PHP mailer in our Joomla configuration, we use SMPT.
Any ideas what I might be doing wrong as this does not appear to be a problem with Engage??

[nikosdion]

This does not come from Akeeba Engage. It comes from PHPMailer, the third party library Joomla itself is using to send emails. PHPMailer support sending emails through PHP's mail(), SMTP etc.

Most likely one of the users who are set up to receive the emails has an invalid email address in their user profile. This is an issue unrelated to Engage.

[david-unwin]

Hi Nicholas,
What is strange is we have other components that send emails such as ACYMailing and RS Joomla Forms and we do not have problems there. I am not saying there is a problem with Engage, but it seems strange that we do not have the problem with these other components. In our Global Configuration settings, we set the Mailer as SMTP no PHP Mailer
I will do some more investigation

[david-unwin]

Nicholas,
One quick question. When a user submits a comment that needs to go through moderation, are they sent an email stating that? I can see from the email templates that an email is sent when someone replies to their comment.
Thanks

[nikosdion]

When a user submits a comment that needs to go through moderation, are they sent an email stating that?

No, but the comment administrators are sent an email to tell them that moderation is necessary. That's why I am saying that the email address in the user profile of one of the comment administrators is invalid.

(Note that in my previous reply I said “users who are set up to receive the emails”. The only such users are comment moderators. Sorry for being unclear. I was also sick with a gastrointestinal viral infection; I am surprised I made as much sense I did!).

[david-unwin]

Hi Nicholas,
First of all I hope you are feeling better. Second thanks for the clarification especially as it was the weekend!
I have checked all our registered users have just create and edit own . Only our 2 super users have other permissions and they are receiving emails. Put this on hold and I will investigate further.
David

[david-unwin]

Ok, I can't see anything wrong anywhere.
So I thought I would set up PHP to log errors.
I have attached a screen shot of help provided by my ISP to set this up.
It talks about loading the ini file in the same folder as where the mail script is run from. I have searched the internet and can't find where in the Joomla files the mail function code is located. I put it in the root folder but that did not work.
Any ideas where I should put it?
Thanks in advance for any information

[nikosdion]

Joomla always runs through its index.php file in your site’s root. Therefore the folder you are looking for is your site’s root. I doubt that these instructions will help you. They are there to help you troubleshoot emails that are being sent from your site. Your problem is that the email is not sent at all.

[david-unwin]

Hi Nicholas,
The root folder is where I did put the PHP ini file and it did not generate any log records, so you are right it did not help.
What is strange is that only the 2 super users should get the email and they both receive the email about any comments added.
So I can't see why we are getting this error 500 message when the emails are being sent successfully?
Do you by chance have any other ideas what I can try so that I can find out why this message is being displayed?