Delete Confirmation Email

Installing/Hosting Pressbooks
1

Hello,

The delete confirmation email is not being sent when attempting to delete a book. Is there a setting to ensure that this email goes out or a preferred plugin that sends it more reliably?

thank you
jeremy

2

Hi Jeremy,
The delete book function used in Pressbooks is pretty much inherited from WordPress core: WordPress/ms-delete-site.php at master · WordPress/WordPress · GitHub but with a filter that overrides the default email message: pressbooks/class-book.php at 3217c734b9f3d25d840c247a5ac5b16b6c1698cb · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub. It’s possible there’s a bug here, but seems more likely that your server might not be configured to send emails as expected. Are other emails being sent as expected from your Pressbooks installation (for new user registration, for example)?

3

Hi,

Thanks for the fast reply. Yes, as far as I can tell all other emails are being sent and received as intended. I am using WP Mail SMTP for mailing and as I stated earlier, all other messages (new books, registration tasks, ect) are being send and received. The delete confirmation seems to be the only message missing.

4

bump… Well, is there a way to grant users the ability to delete a book directly just like the site admin can?

5

Subject: Re: Delete Confirmation Email

Hello everyone one experiencing this issue,

I encountered this exact same problem here in February 2026 running Pressbooks 6.23 on a self-hosted installation. After troubleshooting, I feel this appears to be a Pressbooks-specific bug rather than an email configuration issue - and found a reliable work around.

What I verified:

  • WP Mail SMTP properly configured with Brevo (test emails work perfectly âś“)

  • Contact form emails send successfully âś“

  • User invitation emails send successfully âś“

  • All admin email addresses correctly configured âś“

  • SSL certificates valid âś“

  • Registration Notification enabled âś“

What fails:

  • Book deletion confirmation emails simply don’t send (no debug log entries, no errors - the email attempt never happens)

Working Solution: Instead of using Pressbooks’ built-in book deletion, use this method:

  1. Go to Administrator Network

  2. Select “Books” (second menu item from dropdown)

  3. Hover over the book name you want to delete

  4. Click the menu item “Delete Permanently”

  5. A warning message appears

  6. Confirm the deletion when prompted

This bypasses the Pressbooks deletion email entirely. As the network administrator, you can delete books immediately without email confirmation.

I hope this helps others encountering this issue. It would be great if the Pressbooks team could investigate why the deletion confirmation emails fail while all other email types work correctly.

Best regards,
Doug

PS. FYI This is my pilot site which I am working to get funding to switch to a bilingual EN/JP PB Enterprise version.

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7

Hi all!
I was investigating this issue. The delete action email is handled by WP core, and it sends an email to the admin_email user of the book by default, which is not necessarily the user who performed the action. As we know, a book can have multiple book administrators and what could happen is that the user who request the delete action might not be the one selected as an “admin_email”.
The admin_email user is stored in wp_<BOOK_ID>_options (option_name = “admin_email”).
I’ve created an issue for us to tackle this here: Delete book email · Issue #4352 · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub and address it when we have the chance.
Thank you for reporting this!

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