What?
A quick article on a frequent question I get asked. This refers to an issue within the Joomla CMS (version 2.5.x) where it fails to email users who reset their password.

How?
A few things to check:

Check the email message even exists:

1. Login to your Joomla Admin Panel
2. Navigate to Extensions > Language Manager
3. Click on the “Overrides” label
4. Click on “New” (but don’t create a new one – we’re just checking something)
5. In the right pane, type “COM_USERS_EMAIL_PASSWORD_RESET_BODY” without the quotes and tick the “Constant” radio box and click on the “Search” button.
6. What displays in the search results should be the text that the system emails out on password change. The default if you’ve lost it is as below (exclude the double-quotes):

   “Hello,\n\nA request has been made to reset your %s account password. To reset your password, you will need to submit this verification code in order to verify that the request was legitimate.\n\nThe verification code is %s\n\nClick on the URL below to enter the verification code and proceed with resetting your password.\n\n %s \n\nThank you.”

Check that email addresses match (case-sensitive!!!):

1. Login to your Joomla Admin Panel
2. Navigate to Global Configuration > Site > Site Settings > Feed Email = Site Email (check this is “Site Email”)
3. Then go under Global Configuration > Server > Mail Settings > From email (has to be the exact sender email address (check uppercase&lowercase, etc)).

Check Plugin Settings:

1. Login to your Joomla Admin Panel
2. Navigate to Extensions > Plug-in Manager > User – Joomla!
3. Ensure “Notification Mail to User” is set to “Yes”

Test Joomla can message:

1. Login to your Joomla Admin Panel
2. Create a TEST joomla user group containing you (or if “Super Users” is a tiny group then use these)
3. Navigate to Users > Mass Mail Users > Select the group you just made.
4. Send a test message.

Test your email server can message:

1. Send an email using the server that the “Site Email” uses. If this is web-based, then ensure you are using a separate instance of the browser to your Joomla one.

Check that your template isn’t the problem:

1. If you have a test site that has the same error, change the site template to a default one and see if that works.

Check your cookie policy:

1. Open a browser which allows cookies, and one that does not.
2. Visit your site with both and attempt the password change.