SMTP emails not working

pavsid

One of the main reasons for upgrading to 2.6 was because the SMTP emails stopped working on 2.3 when I upgraded PHP to v7.0.

I read that the version of PHPMailer in Vanilla 2.3 needs updating and by upgrading to 2.6 that would solve it.

The error I was getting before was "SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host".

But, now i've upgraded, the emails still don't appear to be getting sent!

Any ideas?

Thanks.

pavsid

Hi should also add that I can't see any errors in the server's main php log - does Vanilla log errors elsewhere?

donovanb

You could test your SMTP server from the vanilla server using:
https://www.port25.com/how-to-check-an-smtp-connection-with-a-manual-telnet-session-2/

It would be nice if Vanilla had it's own test (like other forums do)

pavsid

Looks like emails send OK when I put different SMTP details in (for my own emails), but not with Mailgun's SMTP details (smtp.mailgun.org).

Have contacted support to see if they have any ideas.

Thanks

x00

it can be hard to find someone to send transactional mail for you. This is the truth.

mailgun may have temporarily blocked you account they may want further detail to know if you re legit. I have experienced that with sparkpost. They twice suspended before masking the account against further suspension.

Oslo you may have not configured it properly with the right port and methods.

x00

gone are the days where anyone will send anything for you.

pavsid

Hi, I don't think Mailgun have blocked the account, we've been with them for years. I've contacted support and they've asked me to provide some error messages. When I try to send a test email in Vanilla 2.6 there are no errors shown - which logs can i look in to see errors? There's nothing showing in the server's php log files - does Vanilla log errors elsewhere?

Thanks

donovanb

Hi, I know a little bit about this stuff, but there is too much of a lack of detail in your postings for me to help.

Do you have SSH access to your vanilla server? Did you do those tests that I posted above (from the server your vanilla install is on)? That is the first step.

telnet smtp.mailgun.org 25

You should receive something like:

Trying 52.35.240.248...
Connected to smtp.mailgun.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ak47 ESMTP ready

Donovan

Swekelt

Still no support for smtp from another provider?

I am not using smtp.mailgun.org but instead a Swedish provider who is my host for the forum. I have configured many smtp mail solutions so know what I am doing.

Any advice on how to fix this problem? I noted that the garden template has empty fields in the conf/config-defaults.php and tried to add the data there but it still doesn't work.

Also. Why are my users being verified using vanilla forums? This creates a major problem in europe right now with the GDPR. I am supposed to validate their emails through my service.

Thanks for any help.

x00

@Swekelt said:
Still no support for smtp from another provider?

What you mean by "support"?

The mailer has SMTP as an option. The deliverability is a seperate issue, much of it is outside of the the framework's responsibility.

Just using the right details and sending email is only the basic idea. Most of the anti-spam measure are are on the DNS level and very much subject the policy of the email service or server you are using.

I will repeat: transactional mail, is not something that most email services want to deal with, and if they do they may still give you a hard time until they can be sure they can trust you.

Some of them the content of the email is screen for link and they will actually probe these links. Sparkpost does this for example. They suspended a clients account twice, before it was whitelisted. It is quite advanced to strip external link from each email. Therefore I recommend discouraging the config option the puts post content in emails. It is really no worth it.