Troubleshooting

Symptoms that come up in practice, with the real fix for each. For behaviour questions, see the FAQ.

“BuddyPress is not active” notice on activation

The plugin requires BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform. Install and activate one of them, then activate Contact Me. The notice clears automatically.

The Contact tab does not appear on a member’s profile

The tab is shown based on the recipient (the profile owner). Three recipient-side gates must all pass. Check them in order:

1. Global toggle - go to the Access tab and confirm Show a “Contact” tab on every member profile is on.
2. Recipient role allowed - confirm the member’s role is ticked in Who can be contacted. Administrators are always allowed regardless.
3. Member opt-out - as that member, open BuddyPress Settings > General and confirm Let other members contact me is ticked. New members default to opted in; this only matters if they turned it off.

If all three pass and the tab still does not render, clear any object cache and reload. BuddyPress nav items can be cached by site-level caching plugins.

A visitor sees the form but the submission is rejected

Form visibility is decided by the recipient’s settings, while permission to send is enforced when the form is submitted. If a visitor or member sees the form but gets “You are not allowed to send messages.” on submit, add their group to Access > Who can send messages (tick Visitors (not logged in) for guests). If the send grid is completely empty, everyone is allowed.

Messages send but no email arrives

Check, in order:

1. WB Plugins > Contact Me > Notifications - is Email notification on?
2. WordPress email delivery - does any other email work (new-user notices, password resets)? If not, install a transactional email plugin such as FluentSMTP, WP Mail SMTP, or Post SMTP. The plugin uses bp_send_email(), which uses wp_mail(), which depends on the host being able to send mail.
3. The email post exists - at Dashboard > Emails, look for the entry whose situation is “A member (or visitor) sent a contact message from your profile.” If it is missing, deactivate and reactivate Contact Me to re-run the installer.

The captcha is wrong even though the answer looks right

The captcha renders a hash of the answer into a hidden field and compares it on submit. If a plugin or browser extension strips hidden fields, rewrites form data, or auto-fills aggressively, the hash and answer will not match. Test in a clean browser profile or incognito window; if it works there, the culprit is in your normal browser.

The spam screen rejects a legitimate message

The heuristic flags pharma, gambling, loan and finance offers, lottery wins, generic call-to-action phrasing, and three or more URLs in one message. If a real message hits one of these, soften the gate with the bcm_spam_check filter (see Hooks and filters). To disable the heuristic entirely:

add_filter( 'bcm_spam_check', '__return_false', 99, 3 );

Use that sparingly.

The inbox shows zero unread but the bell shows a count

The unread count in the Contact nav and the Unread filter query the BuddyPress notifications table for is_new = 1 rows belonging to the bcm_user_notifications component. A higher number on the bell is other BuddyPress notifications (mentions, friend requests, group invites) and the difference is expected.

Old /contact-me/ URLs in stored emails or bookmarks

They still work. The plugin 301-redirects /contact-me/ to the current /contact/ slug. No action needed. Update old emails for clarity whenever convenient.

License activation fails with “not active for this URL”

Your key is bound to another site that has used up its activation slots. Either:

1. Visit the other site, go to License, and click Deactivate License to free the slot, then activate on the new site, or
2. Upgrade your license at wbcomdesigns.com to a higher site-count tier.

Something else

Turn on WP_DEBUG and check wp-content/debug.log. The plugin logs email-send leakage and failed schema migrations there. Include that log when you open a support ticket.