Gmail spam filter + MT notifications = trouble!

September 13, 2005 9:39 AM

How can I get Gmail to whitelist all my blog comment notifications?

In the last month Gmail's spam filter has gotten a little overzealous with my Movable Type-generated blog comment notifications. Gmail consistently dumps the notifications into the spam box, even though I've got a filter set to designate them as "blog related," and even though I take the time to click "Not spam" for each one.

Gmails filters don't allow you to skip the spam box and the only way to whitelist people is to add them to your contact list. But the Movable Type-generated notifcations are from whoever left the comment on my blog — often people who I don't have in my contact list (and don't have any reason to add to my list).

So, how can I work around the otherwise awesome Gmail spam filters to ensure that none of my MT notifications are dumped into my spam box?

posted by arielmeadow to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Change the MT notification script so it always uses the same From e-mail address, and uses the comment author's e-mail as the Reply-To instead of the From. Then you can put the From address in your GMail address book to whitelist it.

I'll let someone else handle the details (my MT install is not the current version) but it should be fairly simple.
posted by kindall at 9:57 AM on September 13, 2005

Kindall's method is the only thing that will work; you can't fix this on the Gmail side. I sent them a suggestion a while back to add a "skip spam check" option when creating a new filter; if enough people do it they might actually implement it.
posted by exhilaration at 10:36 AM on September 13, 2005

Thanks, kindall and exhileration — if this is something I need to do on the MT side of things, I'm sure it's been covered somewhere in the MT support forums. I'll be damned if I can find it, though.
posted by arielmeadow at 10:54 AM on September 13, 2005

I have a feedback form that was getting sent directly to spam, but after plucking a few out from the spam heap and making a filter to label all matching my feedback subject line, I seem to get them all now.

It would be nice if there was a way to always accept messages with certain criteria.
posted by mathowie at 11:08 AM on September 13, 2005

I'm here to answer my own question. Is that allowed?

Once I figured out that this was something I had to do via Movable Type and not Gmail, it was as easy as emailing 6A's uber-helpful support staff. Here was the response I got, shared here for anyone else who might want to make the same change:

You can do this in version 3.2 of Movable Type
by enabling the EmailReplyTo directive in your
mt-config.cgi file:

EmailReplyTo 1

http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/3.2/d_configuration_directives/emailreplyto.htm

That will force the commenter's address to be used in the
Reply-To address rather than the From address.

If you're using a version prior to 3.2, you would have to
modify the underlying code for the comment notification in
lib/MT/App/Comments.pm.
posted by arielmeadow at 12:36 PM on September 13, 2005