Fabricating Email Addresses

Creating email addresses for customers who don’t have them

If you have customers who want to buy online from you but don’t have an email address, the solution is straightforward: as suggested in login as customer, you can simply create an email using their name. For example, if your customer’s name was Scott Wilson, you could create an account with the email [email protected].

There is just one problem: if the email address [email protected] doesn’t exist, the email will bounce, and too many bounces will cause your hoster to complain and/or your deliverability to suffer.

There are a couple of solutions to this issue:

a) Depending on how your email is configured, your email server may have the option of a “catch all” email. Non-existent emails will be forwarded to this address and thus not bounce.

b) You can modify the Zen Cart software to not send to non-existent addresses. Here’s a sample implementation from Zen Cart 1.5.7:

In includes/functions/functions_email.php, right before the check of EMAIL_MODULES_TO_SKIP, i.e.

    if (defined('EMAIL_MODULES_TO_SKIP') && in_array($module,explode(",",constant('EMAIL_MODULES_TO_SKIP')))) return false;

add code that checks a defined constant containing valid addresses at your domain. Skip sending if the email has your domain name but is not in this list.

    $mail_parts = explode('@',strtolower($to_address)); 
    if ($mail_parts[1] == 'YOURDOMAIN.com') {
       $good_emails = explode(",", LIVE_EMAIL);
       if (empty($good_emails)) return; 
       for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($good_emails); $i++) {
          $good_emails[$i] = trim($good_emails[$i]); 
          $good_emails[$i] = str_replace('@YOURDOMAIN.com','',$good_emails[$i]); 
       }
       if (in_array($mail_parts[0], $good_emails)) {
         // continue processing 
       } else {
          return true;  // pretend we have sent the email
       }
    } 



Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified July 3, 2021 by Scott C Wilson (fa55572).