使用电子邮件身份验证注册，只有30％被激活？

Question

I am using php and mysql. And my site is in flash (full flash site)

I have a website which let users to sign up. The signup process including sending "activation email", click link to activate account.

The first two weeks was fine. Out of around 2000 users, 1800 users are activated. After that, the activated users drop drastically, to about 30%. Example: 1000 users signup, only 300 were activated.

At first, I found the problem is because the email could not be reach to ymail, msn and gmail users. (Most of my subscribers are Ymail (yahoo), hotmail/msn(live) and gmail (gmail)). I tried signup using ymail and hotmail, but i didnt get any activation email. I contacted yahoo and msn, eventually my email can go through now.

However, my signup statistic still showing, the activated users are only about 30%, which very confuse me. I contact my hosting company, ask them the whitelist my IP. And they did it.

I need your advice/help on following questions:

• How to check where the problem lies? Is the email not delivered? User receive email but didnt click the activation link?

I am using php mail funstion. and this is my headers:

  $headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "
";

  $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8' . "
";

  $headers .= 'From: Admin <\[e-mail]>' . "
";

  $headers .= 'Return-Receipt-To: Bounce <\[e-mail]>' . "
";

  $headers .= 'Reply-To: Admin <\[e-mail]>' . "
";

  $return_path = "\[e-mail]\";

(I hide my domain name, and i add backslashes within emails, cuz if not, the email wont show here, weird)

Is there anything wrong with the headers?

• What can I do to improve my registration/signup activation process?

Answer 1

You should pass your return path as "-f" parameter for mail() function:

mail(
    $this->recipient,
    $subj,
    $this->body,
    $this->compose_headers(),
    '-f ' . Options::obj()->mail->return_path);

Also, for the best results, if the sending server has a public domain name example.com, the return path should be [e-mail].

Anyway, you should definitely check the logs (/var/log/mail*) to know exactly what's going on.