Cannot change wordpress.com profile email

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    I’m trying to change the email on my account profile (per https://en.support.wordpress.com/email-address/).

    After I enter the new address and save, I get the email to the old address saying ‘Update Requested’ but the new address does not get the confirmation email. The profile page just keeps showing the ‘pending change’ notice. Of course, I’ve searched spam/junk folders and also verified that other wordpress.com emails come through.

    Any suggestions?
    (email visible only to moderators and staff)

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Hi –

    It looks like your email provider has blocked the email from coming through. Are you able to reach out to them and ask that they not block any mail from @wordpress.com?

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    I have already verified that other emails from wordpress.com arrive successfully. It is not being blocked.

  • staff-zinnia · Staff ·

    Ok. Can you clear your browser cache and try one more time? Let me know if it works.

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    I tried it from another browser altogether (firefox vs chrome), in a completely new FF profile, and got the same results.

    I decided to take another approach and tried again with a few different domains. I found that if I use a gmail address then the verification email comes through immediately. It will not come through with any of the addresses for the site domain or other domains on the same hosting service (hostgator, for what it’s worth). That would point back to your first suggestion (blocking), but I did a count today and I have 76 emails from various wordpress.com addresses.

    I’m a little mystified. I’d really like to get the email on the wordpress profile aligned with the administrative email for the web site. And again, I went back through filters and spam settings and folders to make sure I hadn’t missed something.

    Any other ideas?

    Thanks,
    –Roger

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi Roger,

    but the new address does not get the confirmation email

    Would you please confirm what address you’re attempting to change the email to? If you’ll type it here it will be hidden from public view so only staff can see it. And we can use that to try to find more information.

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    OK,

    The address I’m trying to use is (email visible only to moderators and staff). As I mentioned above, ramblingroos.net is hosted by hostgator.com.

    Thanks for checking!
    –Roger

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Thanks Roger. You wouldn’t be able to update the email address here:
    https://wordpress.com/me/account

    to one that’s already in use by another account. The one you listed there is already connected to another user.

    Are you trying to switch the connection to that user instead?

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    Sorry, I’m actually trying to free up that other address to use on this account, but I’ve tried several addresses and seem to have got confused about which was which.

    Of course, if I try an address that is in use, I get the immediate message

    “That e-mail address is already being used.”

    and I wouldn’t be asking this question.

    Check this address instead: (email visible only to moderators and staff)

    That is, in fact, the current “pending change of your email” as noted on the profile page.

    Thanks again,
    Roger

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Thanks, Roger. Does that address actually exist in your mail system? It’s bouncing:

    No Such User Here

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Oh I misread the error. It does look like your mail system is in fact rejecting our email. The confirmation link comes from a noreply address, so it’s tossing it out.

    Would you be willing to check with your mail administrators to see if they can allow it through?

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    Interesting…

    I get lots of other stuff from a no-reply, but this might be blocked up-stream from me. I manage the email server as implemented at the hosting level, but, of course, Hostgator has some of their own stuff in there as well.

    And now I just thought of two things that might be in play here:
    – That address is a forwarding address – comes to my personal address, as well as one other.
    – Also – the other addressee just *yesterday* implemented BoxTrapper (perhaps 2 hours before your last message), so you may have seen a verification request bouncing back.

    As one more test, I’m going to create a completely new address on the same host, without forwarding. I’ll try resetting the profile email to that one and see if that makes any difference.

    –Roger

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    Well, no joy.

    I created a new, standalone email account: (email visible only to moderators and staff)
    I verified that it is working correctly, receiving email, has no spam filtering, trapping, etc.
    Then made the change to the WP.com profile.

    I got the notice at the prior email, but nothing came through to the new email box.

    Can you send me the error you are getting? (via email to avoid the address munging – this current address will work) If I have to go untangle something with Hostgator, I’ll need to have details of the return email to you.

    Thanks!
    –Roger

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hi Roger, we’re still getting 550-Verification failed on that. Can you check in with the host to see what they say?

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    I did notice this from their support section:

    Otherwise, the emails are saved in BoxTrapper and never delivered to your inbox.

    Perhaps when you temporarily disabled BoxTrapper it took some time to take effect, if it involved any DNS changes to MX?

    Is there a way you can check what ended up in BoxTrapper?

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    Yes – BoxTrapper has a “queue” of “held” emails. The new account I tried never had BoxTrapper set up, however.

    As I mentioned above, it seems that I cannot use ANY email address from any of the domains in that shared hosting account (and hence, same IP address). What’s weird is that I *DO* have 2 other WP.com accounts set up with profile addresses using domains that are also using the same shared account.

    BTW – what has led to these email changes is that I’m separating the WP.com assignment for those other websites as I am handing off the administrative duties to other people and don’t want that co-mingled with my main sites.

    Could you go ahead and send me the entire 550 message? Perhaps there is some clue in there. I’m almost starting to wonder if your email server has blacklisted the hostgator email server (it has happened before). But 550 is not what I would expect to see in that case. OTOH, there are multiple potential causes of a 550 failure, so who knows.

    Thanks again,
    Roger

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    HI Roger,

    Could you go ahead and send me the entire 550 message? Perhaps there is some clue in there. I’m almost starting to wonder if your email server has blacklisted the hostgator email server

    It’s definitely not us who’ve blacklisted Hostgator’s email server, as the failure is not with us receiving an email originating at their servers. The email is bouncing back when we send it to you, meaning your server isn’t accepting it.

    The specific error is 550-No Such User Here

    That means your email server does not recognise the user for whom that email is intended, so either the email address is incorrect, or the domain is not properly pointed to your email server (most likely a problem with the MX records on the domain).

    Hostgator’s documentation on this error does not say much, unfortunately:

    https://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/email/email-troubleshooting/550-error

    But here’s a more detailed description from another provider’s documentation that might help:

    https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/email/bounceback-errors/fixing-no-such-user-here

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    Is there ANY WAY you can give me the full email return you are getting? Without that, there really isn’t anything I can do to troubleshoot this from the Hostgator side. The user most definitely DOES exist and I receive other emails from “donotreply” @ your domain (e.g. a password reset request). Supernovia mentioned there was a Verification error after the initial 550, but I think there is probably more after that.

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    I agree actually, “no such user” in this case, with a 550, means your server has tried to send an email to us in response, and finds that there is no such user as no-reply. Which is accurate.


    @regregoryallen    , I just realized we can try something else. I’m sending an email from a real address, using the last address you specified. We’ll be in touch shortly.

  • Unknown's avatar
    regregoryallen · Member ·

    So, after your email to me, it seems that you have now done the email verification manually.

    As I did more research, it seems that the 550 verification error can also result when the receiving server (hostgator smtp) cannot look up the sending server. I used “dig” to look up MX records for everything in the chain and all seemed well, but I could have missed something. I also examined the email headers for the verification emails and compared against headers for the other emails (password reset, etc.). They are quite different and have different origin systems. It could be there is something unusual in that header that is confusing the hostgator server. I did notice that the “envelope-from” field was missing and there are “ARC-Authentication” entries as compared with the successful emails.

    In my case, you’ve now resolved the issue. But I imagine that you will run into something similar with other users with email hosted on HostGator.

    Unless you would like me to do some testing, I’m ready to call this one closed.

    Thanks for your help!
    –Roger

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