WordPress MU

Something is preventing wpmu from sending emails to hotmail.

I got all the dns stuff sorted, everything fixed (dnsstuff.com has all pass for my domain). I tested the mail server by sending a mail from my hotmail account, it arrived almost instantly. I then replied from my domain's email to hotmail and it got into the inbox just fine.

But then I tried to change my test blog's email to the hotmail account and the email never got there, not even in the spam folder. I asked a friend to register using hotmail account and he didnt get a mail either, not even to the spam folder.

I am using stmp mail thing, and qmail (on fedora core6). What could be happening? Since I did receive a mail when I sent it manually, why isnt wpmu sending the mails to hotmail?

It could well be sending them. Microsoft have a rather unexplainble anti-spam policy which leads to a lot of email never even being delivered to users spam folders.

Also if your host is in an IP block that MS have decided is a spammer you are out of luck

Also, if you're IP is dynamic (or potentially so), like if this is your box on a cable modem or something, they'll block it.

Hotmail has horrid, horrid practices in place for this. Yet, tons of spam gets through, and legitimate emails are being lost.

There are "procedures" that you can take to "try" to ensure your mail server IP is allowed through, but even that isn't a guarantee that it will pass.

The only logical conclusion is, "Hotmail sucks".

It's also a big source of incoming spam and splogs, too.

99% of the people out there with a hotmail account have another legitimate email account. To be flat honest, blocking hotmail might be a viable option.

Even legitimate mail servers have trouble at times with hotmail, and even with all the complaints flooding in the problem still persists.

Yet, spammers can get through. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Ok then, I guess I wasnt going crazy since I did everything I found on google to get the stmp stuff sorted.

I did block hotmail and added a notice. Its a shame really, I got lots of real users and nearly no splogs from hotmail accounts.

Yep.

<sarcasm>Gotta love Microsoft, right?</sarcasm>