XF 2.0 Mail Problem

[TheSalt]

I'm using the default mail option on XF. The address is set up with mailgun and has the DNS verified. Its sending email confirmations fine but they are not logging at mailgun. When I send an email with the same email using webmail they deliver and don't log. When I send an email to that email address they log as accepted but don't deliver. Any ideas on what's going on here???

 

[Mike]

If you use the default system, you're sending through PHP which hands off to sendmail (or whatever replaces sendmail, such as Postfix) on your server. It won't be using any external mail system/SMTP server unless that has been configured at the server level, and you would probably know that as it would require explicit configuration (and root access).

Based on your previous thread, I believe Mailgun is exposed via SMTP, so you'd need to use that option in XF to send via it. (That then opens you up to the server/firewall-type of restrictions that may limit the ability to make outgoing connections on some shared servers in an attempt to prevent spam.)

 

[TheSalt]

@Mike I sincerely appreciate your insight on this, thank you. Do you have any cost-efficient ideas to stop or reduce emails from bouncing? This is for a brand new forum and cost is an issue. I'm looking for something that is hopefully free at our numbers but something I can simply upgrade as time goes on as to avoid having to address this problem again.

Many thanks!

PS- Thank you for that info, I passed it onto the host.

 

[Mike]

Email delivery is a hugely complex topic with a lot of variables. Third-party services can certainly help, though some of it depends on the specific issues you're having.

Do you have specific cases of mails not being delivered? Note that if you get a bounce, that's not necessarily anything to do with you -- you need to see the reason in the bounce message specifically.

 

[TheSalt]

@Mike admittedly, I know very little about this stuff. I used to run another XF forum and some people would complain about not getting confirmation emails. It's not something I tested this time around. Is it possible that it's not even a problem? I sincerely thought this was a problem everyone faced and finding a service/fix was just part of running a forum.

When XF sends an account confirmation email to my yahoo account it lands in my inbox. Could it be that I don't even need to worry about this?

Many thanks!

 

[Mike]

If you're just starting your forum, it's almost certainly something you can defer. It is worth setting up the bounce email address to one that you can receive, so that if you start getting bounces, you can look into the reason. The most significant thing would be if your mail server's IP is on a blacklist, which can certainly happen with shared server IPs though it's certainly not guaranteed.

If you start having some problems in the future (or need to send more emails than your host would allow), then you could look at third-party mail sending services.

 

[TheSalt]

@Mike thank you, I guess I'll put a pin in this for now. Happy Holidays!