XF 1.1 Amazon SES With Xenforo

[TheBigK]

Yesterday, I stumbled upon Amazon SES which now has SMTP gateway. I'm planning to use it with Xenforo to handle all the emails; so that the delivery is always right. I, however have basic questions -

• To the best of my knowledge, I only need to enter the SMTP settings provided by Amazon in 'Email Options' in XF ACP. Is that enough?
• Can I use it to send notifications or monthly newsletter to all the members who have opted to receive emails from administrator? Would that be spamming? We've over 90k members who've opted to receive emails from admins; but my estimate is that 10-20k of them aren't active. We didn't have 'email' verification enabled in our earlier days.

Thank you for your time in advance

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You can typically set any email account as catch all. I had to use imap in order to get mine to work, settings are:



That email is a catch all and verified in SES, even though I use it for nothing other than bounce handling. All SES email is sent via other emails which are purely forwarders, not actual accounts.

Hope that helps. Yes, this is tested and working for XF bounce handling.

 

[Andy.N]

I don't have a mail server set up on my server as all the emailing is done externally. SES does not support imap/pop3
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=601828

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You should be able to use any email account, gmail even... as long as its approved in SES.

 

[TheBigK]

@Anthony Parsons - I might be wrong - but that doesn't look like Amazon SES handling your forums' email. I haven't yet found out a way to have amazon SES send bounced mail to any specific email ID.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

SES handles my forums email, bounce backs are done via SNS... XF just needs to login to the account in order to grab the bounced email and process it. You create a new topic in SNS, say "emailname-bounces" and then action it by subscribing to it via email (default is http), enter bounced email address and all bounces go there. Do the same for complaints.

Go into SWS and assign the topic name for bounce and complaint to the email address specifically for each.

XF cron runs, and well ah... any bounced emails found will process users account accordingly.

 

[TheBigK]

Wow! I didn't know you could create email subscriptions! I'm half-way through the setup.

Go into SWS and assign the topic name for bounce and complaint to the email address specifically for each.

Is this the setting -

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Yes, that is where you assign the SNS setups to your email address. XF then cron logs into your email, grabs bounces and actions them.

I have one http set for my newsletter which calls back to Sendy, I have assigned email callbacks to all other verified emails which bounce and complaints go into the catchall and get processed. Yes, I punish those who mark the mail as spam instead of unchecking their options to stop receiving it.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

In SNS, > Topics > Create New Topic > Name it and create it.

Select new topic (checkbox) > Drop down actions > subscribe to topic > change protocol to email > enter email address that XF accesses to process bounces.

Go back to SES > Click email > assign the new topic to the bounce position.

Repeat above steps for complaints.

You will get a confirmation email to your bounce address, click to accept it... all done.

Its very easy with Amazon...

 

[TheBigK]

@Anthony Parsons - I've set up everything, but all the bounce mail appears only inside 'All Mail' section of gmail. The inbox is always empty.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I don't use gmail... but like the XF docs say, you want to use an account for this that nothing else uses, as it clears out the inbox when it processes.

 

[Adam Dicker]

When sending trough Amazon SES, how do i remove the the default of xenforo sending 30 email every ten second or so? Amazon allows me 14 mails per second.

Thanks

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I didn't realise XF limited email... I thought that would be your server if anything.

 

[TheBigK]

Interesting. I didn't realise that XF was limiting email send. Apparently, they do it here on XF. Any time a new announcement is posted in the forum I'm subscribed to, I get email instantly!

Would love to know if we can match XF's sending limit with that of Amazon SES.

 

[Mike]

There's no email limiting in XenForo.

 

[Dan Allen]

@Anthony Parsons - I have been using SES successfully for months now. I'm also handling all our newsletters via SES. I however have not been able to setup the bounced email handler in XF while routing my mails through SES. I'm wondering if you got XF's bounced email handler working with SES. The only problem is that the XF's bounced email handler requires you to have a catch all email account which is not possible with amazon SES (or is it?).

I do not understand what you are saying what is possible with SES. Here is what I am about to try. I have a catchall setup: xfbouncedmail@mydomain.com. I put that into the XF field


I have to wait until morning, so my client can submit that email address for validation at SES. I'll let you know if that gets automated bounce handling working.

 

[TheBigK]

@Dan Allen - I've already set bounces and everything works perfectly fine. I have a gmail account that collects all the bounced emails and XF works fine with it.

 

[PJK]

I'm having issues getting AWS working with Xenforo. I'm getting this error:
Zend_Mail_Protocol_Exception: Email totest@gmail.com failed: Connection timed out - library/Zend/Mail/Protocol/Abstract.php:277

How should I troubleshoot this?
Thanks.

 

[Dan Allen]

How should I troubleshoot this?

If your installation of XF is normal, have you got anything through Amazon initated by a different client?

Can you send mail from your website with anything else, to verify mail on your server works?





That was the whole shooting match at the Xenforo end.

 

[PJK]

If your installation of XF is normal, have you got anything through Amazon initated by a different client?

Can you send mail from your website with anything else, to verify mail on your server works?

View attachment 132393

View attachment 132394

That was the whole shooting match at the Xenforo end.

I'm on XF 1.5. I haven't setup the bounce handle yet. Just verified the email on Amazon SES, copied the SMTP info over and set as SMTP, and then sent a test email. I keep getting this:
Email to user@gmail.com failed (after retry): Connection timed out2 minutes ago - library/Zend/Mail/Protocol/Abstract.php:277
Email to user@gmail.com failed: Connection timed out2 minutes ago - library/Zend/Mail/Protocol/Abstract.php:277

Here is my setup (credentials copied from SES);
https://www.dropbox.com/s/juhcs8v1ihq8l7p/Screenshot 2016-04-22 16.34.58.png?dl=0

Is there anything else needed? I've tried 2 different ports, and I've tried TLS and SSL. How can I troubleshoot from here? Thanks!

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Ensure "Sender info in From header on contact emails" is unchecked, and you may also have to try different ports for it to work correctly. Mine uses TLS and port 25 for it to work. Wouldn't work with any other variation.