Mail Log at a glance

Mail Log records every email your Joomla website sends through the Joomla mailer. For each message you see who triggered it, whom it went to, whether delivery succeeded and — depending on the settings — the full content. Failed deliveries are recorded just like successful ones. That gives you a complete record of what your website actually sent.

Mail Log is a pure administrator extension for Joomla 6 and produces no output in the frontend whatsoever.

The screenshots in this manual were taken on a German Joomla installation. The extension follows the language of your installation, so the labels appear in English on an English backend.

The dashboard of Mail Log with key figures and an activity chart — The dashboard sums up the mail volume: total, today's and weekly figures, error rates, an activity chart as well as the latest mails and errors.

What you use Mail Log for

Troubleshooting delivery. You see immediately which mails failed, with the exact error message from the mail server.
Proof and audit. Was the order confirmation, the registration mail, the notification really sent? The log answers that with timestamp, recipient and content.
Resending. A lost mail can be delivered again with one click — to the original addresses or to a different one.
An overview of the volume. The dashboard shows volume, peak times and error rates at a glance.

Privacy is built in, not bolted on

A mail log inevitably stores potentially sensitive content. Mail Log is therefore frugal with the data out of the box:

By default only a short excerpt of the message text is stored, no full body and no raw MIME message.

Sensitive mails are recognised. Messages with subject lines such as "reset password", "token" or "2FA" are classified as sensitive automatically and stored with metadata only by default — the reset link does not end up in the log.
Encryption without a key in the database. If you choose encrypted storage, the key is derived from the Joomla secret and is not held in the database. A stolen database alone does not reveal the content.
Attachments outside the web root. Captured attachments are copied to a protected directory that cannot be reached directly over the web.
Separate permissions for reading. Whoever may see the list may not automatically read the message texts — that is a permission of its own.
Strictly local. No external services are contacted. No data leaves your website.

What Mail Log consists of

The package installs three extensions that belong together:

The component com_maillog — the backend interface with dashboard, list and detail view.
The system plugin plg_system_maillog — it intercepts the mail sending and writes the log entries. Without this plugin nothing is recorded.
The task plugin plg_task_maillog — the maintenance tasks for the Joomla task scheduler (cleanup, statistics, migration).

How to read on

If you are starting out, this order works best:

Applies to version 1.0.4.