Amazon SES and Xenforo

Yeah, as far as I can see there needs to be a 2nd provider to handle the bounce inbox and for sending/receiving personal email. So that needs to be configured in some way in the DNS and in conjunction with SES I guess.
 
By default, SES will return all bounces to the email address being sent from via Email Feedback Forwarding. To change the default email for return bounces / complaints to be returned, you must setup an SNS topic and subscription for each, uncheck the "Email Feedback Forwarding" in your SES email / domain being used to send.

See: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/amazon-ses-and-xenforo.128853/page-2#post-1150297

When you create an SNS topic and subscription for each, an email will be sent to the email you want to use for both bounce and complaint. You verify both of those to activate the subscriptions, then you assign each SNS topic subscription to your SES email / domain.

You would obviously only use domain level SES if all email is only used for your XF site and you want all complaints bounces to return to the same path. Otherwise use email at the individual level via SES for your domain.

The SNS topic is just super simple, where each subscription takes a few seconds to create, just entering your email address for the email option. Many miss the confirmation email being sent, especially for XF with bounce handling, as their bounce handling system empties their inbox.

So disable bounce handling if needed whilst you wait for the confirm emails to be received and verified. They should happen within minutes. That is confirming your email address for use. Once you assign each to the SES email, disable feedback forwarding to avoid conflicts and all set.
 
Thanks. That is extremely useful and explains SNS well.
You would obviously only use domain level SES if all email is only used for your XF site and you want all complaints bounces to return to the same path. Otherwise use email at the individual level via SES for your domain.
So if I also want to receive and send personal email then I need to use email at the individual level via SES for my domain. How do I do this?
Lets say I do my personal email ( alfa1@mydomain.com paypal@mydomain.com webmaster@mydomain.com etc ) through gmail custom domain.
Then how do I set up DNS and amazon SES to handle XF transactional/bounce email? (noreply@mydomain.com , bounced@mydomain.com )
 
Lets say I do my personal email ( alfa1@mydomain.com paypal@mydomain.com webmaster@mydomain.com etc ) through gmail custom domain.
Then how do I set up DNS and amazon SES to handle XF transactional/bounce email? (noreply@mydomain.com , bounced@mydomain.com )
Not possible. Mail servers sending to @mydomain.com will look-up your DNS MX records, and make contact with the defined server(s). You will either need Google or Amazon SES to handle inbound email for @mydomain.com, but not both.

For me, Google Apps custom domain handles DNS MX records for mydomain.com and a gmail mailbox bounces@mydomain.com receives it. XF checks this Gmail mailbox. Amazon SES is then setup/verified to send on behalf of @mydomain.com, and XF connects to Amazon SES SMTP to send them.
 
For me, Google Apps custom domain handles DNS MX records for mydomain.com and a gmail mailbox bounces@mydomain.com receives it. XF checks this Gmail mailbox. Amazon SES is then setup/verified to send on behalf of @mydomain.com, and XF connects to Amazon SES SMTP to send them.
That would be an ideal configuration. Could you please explain how to set this up?
 
SES is an SMTP only, it does not receive mail other than its own SMTP bounce / complaint handling.

If you want all email from a domain to bounce to the one address, you can setup SES domain level, otherwise, you setup each email via SES email. Again though, we are only talking about sending email (SMTP).
 
I would say... don't think too hard about this. Regardless of the email address you use to send email, SNS allows you to receive bounce and complaints to another email account, as per previously outlined setup.

All you have to do is ensure the sending email is valid, authorised in SES and is sending via SES. Then setup that email in SES with your SNS details, assigning the bounce address to collect bounces and complaints. All previously outlined in this thread, and some others I think, about this topic.

Sending email (valid and authorised in SES, via SES) > Assign bounce and complaint SNS to the SES sending email > Collect bounces and complaints at the assigned email you nominated (Also valid and authorised in SES via SNS confirmation at SNS setup).
 
I now have it setup so that SES is sending emails and SNS topics are sending bounce & complaint notifications to an outlook.com address. XF retrieves the outlook.com email address.

XenForo is not recognizing the emails as bounce messages. Type=none
What can I do to change the type to bounce?
 
I now have it setup so that SES is sending emails and SNS topics are sending bounce & complaint notifications to an outlook.com address. XF retrieves the outlook.com email address.

XenForo is not recognizing the emails as bounce messages. Type=none
What can I do to change the type to bounce?
Maybe I'm missing something here. Why not use the 'bounced email address' in xF to send them directly to the outlook address?
 
The outlook address is defined as the bounce address in XF. Maybe thats the problem and I need to turn that off.
 
How do I get xenforo to read the SNS notification?
Is there a way to get the XenForo member ID from the SNS bounce notification?
 
It grabs the member email from the bounce attribute from the email.

Also check:

Screen Shot 2018-10-04 at 8.05.29 am.webp

Again, the account MUST be a CATCH-ALL account, otherwise it will not work as it won't accept + (I know gmail does accept + outside catchall specifically).
 
I've followed the guide in this thread to try and get SES + bounce handing working together - but I can't seen to get it working in an XF2.1 install (upgraded recently from 1.5).

Do you have "Bounced email address" filled in? As when I specify a gmail address in here, I can no longer send via SES (as it thinks I'm trying to send from an unverified domain).
 
Thanks @Alfa1 - I've just been tinkering and managed to get it working slightly differently in the end. I couldn't get it working unless I had the bounce address on the same domain, so I switched from gmail > local server and it's now working as expected. Thanks for the help :).
 
Back
Top Bottom