AShop receipts, order notices, messaging to affiliates and customers are not received.
If orders are being recorded, but customers are not receiving the reciepts and the administrator is not receiving order notices, it is possible that the e-mail is being blocked or filtered by the receiving ISP's mail server spam filters. This can be caused to the server being on spam black lists.
If this is the case, sometimes mail will be received by some customers and not by others, depending on the type of spam filtering and which black list or spam filter criterea that they use. Free mail accounts such as HotMail typically have the highest levels of filtering. AOL also seems to have very high levels of filtering. Many times the spam filters will block mail even when it is legitimate.
Note: The Return-path is set to the $ashopemail by order.php. To change this you would only need to change the AShop Email setting in the admin panel, but this is unlikely to make a difference. Blacklists typically look at the Received header field instead and the only way to change this is to send the mail through a different server.
If the emailed receipts are received by some customers and not received by others, then the AShop scripts and mail() function on the server are most likely working properly.
Note: The PHP mail() function on the server can be tested independently from AShop by uploading a simple script and calling it in a browser. The following is an example. If mail is received at a domain that does not use spam filtering, but not received at a hotmail address, then the mail() function is working and the server is being filtered. If this is the case, the solution is to move to a different server that is not being blocked.
Hotmail and MSN email are notorious for blocking messages. They filter messages based on content and also based upon black lists of troublesome servers.
The message content is evaluated and rated by their spam filters. The ratings are based on usage of HTML, links, images, and keywords that have been identified as popular in spam messages, such as "free". Receipts from the shopping cart are less likely to be filtered if the receipt format is Plain Text and the product names do not include keywords that might trigger spam filters.
Hosting services can end up on spam black lists when any domain hosted on the server is identified as sending spam. Cheap hosting services that do not closely monitor email activity and check for black listings are more likely to have email blocked than higher quality services where there are fewer hosted domains and where the activity is monitored more carefully.