Email Settings

[Ndugu]

Hello.

We're looking into re-opening our forums to new users and want to make sure the email is working. Questions:

1) If we use PHP as the delivery method, I assume that means it will send from an address like forums@ourdomain.com. How do we configure this? I don't see where we would enter the credentials on the forums.

2) Is there a better way to send emails? I see the option for SendGrid but not sure what that is.

[Jim M]

1. Please contact your hosting provider for further assistance. They will be able to tell you how your server is configured for this PHP mail.
2. SendGrid is an email service. Instead of sending via your own server, you send via their professional email service. Email sending/receiving is a complex system which can lead to vulnerabilities/security problems, email deliverability due to being blacklisted, etc... Overall, it's a pain. Those that want to offload that pain, can use SendGrid or another service like SendGrid.

[Ndugu]

18 minutes ago, Jim M said:

1. Please contact your hosting provider for further assistance. They will be able to tell you how your server is configured for this PHP mail.

We can configure the server, but is there a place in the forum admin where we'll need to add the credentials?

[Jim M]

3 minutes ago, Ndugu said:

We can configure the server, but is there a place in the forum admin where we'll need to add the credentials?

PHP mail would be through your server's configuration. Anything you need to configure would be in your php.ini 😉 . 

All the software does pass that through native PHP functions and then PHP handles it to how you configured it.

[Zhivko]

Hello, InvisionCommunity supports SMTP but it doesn't work with google mail servers. It is trying to login to the mail servers using plain text password even when settings say it should use TLS and SSL. The error is clear, it is trying to login to smtp.gmail.com using plaintext username and passwords without encrypting them. As such, we're unable to use SMTP for our forums.

 

In case you are wondering, We have confirmed the email account and password are working and we have no problem logging.

Edited May 1 by Zhivko

[Randy Calvert]

Are you using an “app specific password”?  Your regular login will be rejected by Google.

Edited May 1 by Randy Calvert

[Marc]

[Zhivko]

There is no "APP specific login" when it comes to SMTP. You login with your email and password. That's it. Gmail requires SSL always and you can choose TLS or not. IN the forums you can not setup SSL since (ssl://smtp.gmail.com) is not a valid url according to the forums functions. You can choose TLS, but i believe communication between forums internal smtp function and the actual smtp is buggy.

A working example of successful SMTP connection/login and usage with gmail SMTP servers would be nice. I am yet to find one.

[Zhivko]

Quote

220 smtp.gmail.com ESMTP cp9-20020a170902e78900b001ec636c883csm2753102plb.105 - gsmtp
> EHLO smtp.gmail.com
250-smtp.gmail.com at your service, [x.x.x.x]
250-SIZE 35882577
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-CHUNKING
250 SMTPUTF8
> STARTTLS
220 2.0.0 Ready to start TLS
> EHLO smtp.gmail.com
250-smtp.gmail.com at your service, [x.x.x.x]
250-SIZE 35882577
250-8BITMIME
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN XOAUTH2 PLAIN-CLIENTTOKEN OAUTHBEARER XOAUTH
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-CHUNKING
250 SMTPUTF8
> AUTH LOGIN
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
> Zm9ydW1Ac29uZ2ZhY3RzLmNvbQ==
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
> ZjdCV1FTUm0zJWJ2KVVOdQ==
535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. For more information, go to
535 5.7.8  https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentials cp9-20020a170902e78900b001ec636c883csm2753102plb.105 - gsmtp

In the logs you can clearly see that forum software tries to authenticate using PLAN even when TLS or SSL is selected.

Edited May 3 by Zhivko

[Marc]

We have many thousands of users using gmail. Your screenshot there actually shows its using STARTTLS (line 6). There is indeed an app specific password I believe.

[Ndugu]

So how do these many thousands of users using Gmail have it set up?

[Randy Calvert]

9 hours ago, Zhivko said:

There is no "APP specific login" when it comes to SMTP. You login with your email and password. That's it. Gmail requires SSL always and you can choose TLS or not. IN the forums you can not setup SSL since (ssl://smtp.gmail.com) is not a valid url according to the forums functions. You can choose TLS, but i believe communication between forums internal smtp function and the actual smtp is buggy.

A working example of successful SMTP connection/login and usage with gmail SMTP servers would be nice. I am yet to find one.

Yes there is. 
https://www.febooti.com/products/automation-workshop/tutorials/enable-google-app-passwords-for-smtp.html

Google made this a requirement a few years back. All new instances require it. They’re slowly going back and requiring legacy deployments to use it. This is not an IPS issue/setting. 

All IPB can do is pass the request to Google. They can’t force them to accept it.  I can tell you from personal experience they can and do require app specific passwords. 

[Marc]

1 hour ago, Ndugu said:

So how do these many thousands of users using Gmail have it set up?

Im not actually sure I understand your question here. If they are using it, of course its been set up

[Zhivko]

Alright, this makes sense. We're going to try it. Thank you!