Not now David I have just tried it but the form doesn’t work with the attachment it does without, so the fault has to be with the setup. I had a bit of problem setting up Joe’s stacks but once I got the set up for email right I added the attachment thinking it would be another learning curve and it worked straight off, the same hosting site. This attachment works in collecting and uploading it just does not send!!!.
@graham-sm1th I need you to send me a specific log file, inside the logs folder you’ll see a form_rw3931F4AE_9754_44CC_AD05_0D8D1F099D8F.log — that is the file I need.
@dan you have my credentials for my server, so you can deploy there for a test (in a new folder under the test folder) as you like, if you want to.
I’ve just been digging in to this issue further and I believe that the form is being blocked by your web host’s security (WAF/ModSecurity), not by the code Elements generates.
When submitting the form with an attachment, I am getting a “403 forbidden” error returned from the server — this is key to note that the error is coming from your server, not from the code published by Elements.
What’s happening
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Your browser is sending the form correctly.
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Your host is blocking the path that contains “email” before it reaches the form handler (the code published by Elements).
Could I get you to ask your host to whitelist this path: /rw/elements/com.realmac.corepack/api/email (or temporarily disable ModSecurity for that exact path).
What to send to your host (copy/paste)
Hello,
our website contact form is being blocked by ModSecurity/WAF.
Please whitelist (or disable ModSecurity for) this exact path:
/rw/elements/com.realmac.corepack/api/email
This is a standard contact form submission from our own site (same domain).
We are receiving 403 before the request reaches our application.
Thank you!
How to confirm it’s fixed
Once your host has whitelisted the email route, submit the contact form again on your site. If it sends without an error, you’re done ![]()
Nope still get that….
I started this thread 11 days ago and I followed all the advise given, and my contact form still does not work, I feel like the thread was hi-jacked.
This is the reply from my hostHi Graham,
Thanks for getting in touch.
I’ve had a look at this, and disabling that security rule for the way this code is working is too dangerous. I think the code should be updated to work in a more secure manor.
He is Nutty about hosting and he has a reputation to keep.
Kind Regards
Graham
GRaJ0N52@gmail.com
My take thus far on my contact form email failure. These are assumptions, and you know what they say about assumptions.
1. I can successfully send contact form emails from Preview in Browser.
Assumption: Stmp name, port, username, password, to, from..etc all correct.
2. I can publish the site to a local folder and copy that folder to my Windows 11 Xampp server and the form works and sends the email, as well as updating the logs.
Assumption: Elements is publishing correctly.
3. Move the same files to my IONOS test site and the contact form will not send e-mail or write to the Elements logs.
Assumption: There is some security rule preventing it working on IONOS sites.
4. I asked IONOS to: Please whitelist (or disable ModSecurity for) this exact path:
/rw/elements/com.realmac.corepack/api/email, they also expressed security concerns, and would not do it.
I make have to find another component or form to send contact data and give up on the form in Elements.
I could image this is the same with many hosters. @dan Do you know when we use the contact form that any information needs to be pulled from outside (and we may need consent from the visitors as their IP address will be transferred) or if everything stays at the webhosting server?
Try it now David I have removed the attachment and updated the thaccess, the email works but the attachment backend needs to be reworked to make it secure, it would seem
Kind Regards
Graham
GRaJ0N52@gmail.com
Given the reply from my server are you going to make the sending of attachments more secure as a priority. I was puzzled why after trying to send the attachment my site came up with a warning; Not Secure , now it makes sense.
12 days, and I am back to where I was day 1. It works with Preview in browser and on my PHP 8.3 server, but not IONOS servers.
Where does one go to see their support tickets?
I changed all of the settings of the contact form to use Gmail. Got and app password from them and set the setting to the exact seetings that my QSOCardCreator program uses for smtp. This worked in preview on on my server, but failed with the exact same error on IONOS (Error 404) mail folder not found. I know that Ben said that that folder is just a virtual route and does not need to exist. I had my brother try the form on his web provider, errors there also. I guess the methods used on this form is too modern for some of the leading providers. I think Elements is pretty and the WYSIWYG is nice but I may just have to stay with Classic, where things just work.
Wow! This is fun. I spend about 14 hours today setting up my system to use webhooks, since contact mail will not work on IONOS (Before anyone tells my to switch to a different server, know they are the 2nd highest used service in the world, and I have been flawlessly using them for 15 years. Classic has never had a problem with them).
Anyway it appears webhooks will not work either, and has pretty much the same problem as email. It does not like those imaginary folders that Elements Contact form uses. See below.
I put in a support ticket 12 or 13 days ago, and can not find a place to check on it’s status. Before this experience I would have thought creating a contact form would be a small task. I believe this one page of my site is taking longer then the entire site written in Classic and Foundry 2 took. Not sure what to try next. The bright side of this is a am learning PHP out of this. I have always been a Microsoft guy, and have 30+ years of development experience, a Masters of Science in Information Systems (MSIT) , and Unix, PHP, and Elements has appeared to cut me down to size. Maybe I’m getting to old for this. Support - I await your next command. (Rant over.).
@bobsimoneau Sorry this is not being straightforward for you to setup
We really hate to see users having issues. Please know we’re aware this is not ideal, and will do everything we can to get it working for you.
@ben is on the process of adding better logging and reporting on the form so we can more quickly diagnose (and fix) issues.
The fact that the Form works locally and on your Windows server, really does suggest there’s an issue with the way IONOS have their servers setup..
Do you have a custom .htaccess file on IONOS? just wondering if that could be throwing things off…
I’m going to create a IONOS account today so we can test and ensure it works with them out of the box, and if not, get it fixed so that it does!!!
What account/server do you have on IONOS? The Plus account maybe?
I have a IONOS Web Hosting Expert account**.** Below is a message a got this morning as they have sent it up a level. I will be calling them this morning.
Dear Mr. Robert Simoneau,
Thank you for contacting us.
We sincerely apologize for the frustration you’ve encountered while trying to resolve the issue with your contact form.
Your current IONOS contract is a shared hosting package. Within this type of environment, external connections are not permitted for security and stability reasons. Because of this, certain scripts or routing methods that attempt external calls may not function as expected.
To investigate further, could you please confirm the following:
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Which email address is currently configured in your contact form to receive submissions?
-
Which file on your hosting package contains the script for the contact form (e.g., contactform.php or another PHP file)?
If you still need further assistance, I suggest that you contact us by phone at 1-484-254-5555 so that we can help you with a solution much quicker than via e-mail.
Sincerely,
Joey
IONOS Customer Service
I am not trying to make this hard on anyone, I will even send you the FTP username and password to test-n1et in case you or Ben need to look around, Just let me know
I also provided Ben with the access to my Ionos Server.
In any case, calling external services are not allowed on any of my websites for GDPR reasons. I would need consent for this from my clients just for this and create a consent banner which I do not want to do.
I don’t know if this helps with the troubleshooting, I can send successfully with “Preview in Browser. I can publish to a folder on my desktop, move to my windows PHP server and it works. If I put the same folder on my mac-mini PHP server, or publish to the Mac-Mini PHP server it fails with “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (Internal Server Error)”
http://localhost/n1et/rw/elements/com.realmac.corepack/api/email
Can it be a Unix thing only?
Apologies for the delayed response, I’ve been unwell the past few days.
I believe the issue may stem from how IONOS handles .htaccess files. It looks like they don’t support .htaccess files in subfolders, which is a problem because Elements uses one in the /rw/elements/com.realmac.copepack/api/ folder to route requests correctly to the PHP backend.
I won’t get too deep into the technical details here, but I’ll be doing some further testing and adjustments this week to see if we can get Forms fully working on IONOS-hosted sites.
Thanks so much for your patience, I know this has taken longer than any of us would’ve liked.


