Dr. Pat Customers Post Count:22
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| 15 Nov 2009 06:02 AM |
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Hey Will et al, I have seen a few discussions about DNN in the future offering the option of defining the SMTP on a per portal basis. (Not sure if this has already happened with 5.1 as I haven't upgraded yet). However, the biggest challenge that my portal is facing at the moment is that all email is being tagged as spam. I am pretty confident that this is the result of using a shared SMTP (host defined). The newsletter module which I use allows me to define the SMTP for my portals newsletter - it seems to me that any module which is going to send emails to users would also offer the ability to define SMTP settings. Active Social and Active Forums are both designed to send lots of emails to users for various reasons and the larger a site becomes the more likely it is to get marked as spam unless it is able to define the SMTP authentication. If this is something which could be integrated especially for those using the combination of AS and AF it would be fantastic. With per portal SMTP I would feel  whereas at the moment I am more  Thanks, Pat |
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Terry SadlerCustomers Post Count:241
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| 15 Nov 2009 08:41 AM |
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+1 Concur ...it would be ideal to be able to define SMTP per portal instance. |
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Terry Sadler, CISSP
Compass North Group, LLC
Any man who may be asked in this century, what he did to make his life Worthwhile, can respond with a good deal of Pride and Satisfaction, "I served in the United States Navy". JFK |
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Dan BallCustomers Post Count:582
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| 15 Nov 2009 01:18 PM |
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No, even in 5.1.4 the SMTP settings are per-install instead of per-portal. I gave up on the SMTP servers that my hosting service provided and set up my own (only accepts traffic from my server). If you are running a full server (not a shared hosting site) you can do that quite easily, and that will avoid a lot of the headaches you might encounter otherwise. |
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Travis CrittendenCustomers Post Count:42
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| 16 Nov 2009 01:51 PM |
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The way I am handling this is as follows:
I am using gmail to provide smtp services. I want the from address of the email entirely different on a per portal basis (different domain name).
I set my admin account to have a new custom email address that I own (hosted on google apps in my case, but anywhere is ok). I go to my gmail account in the advanced settings and setup this account as a second one that I own. I verify the confirmation email and... now it sends site portal email with the admin acct email address and correct headers. + now I have a record of all email sent (I can change this).
More info from the goog...
| Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server - requires TLS: |
smtp.gmail.com (use authentication)
Use Authentication: Yes
Use STARTTLS: Yes (some clients call this SSL)
Port: 465 or 587 |
| Account Name: |
your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com) |
| Email Address: |
your email address (username@gmail.com or username@your_domain.com) |
| Password: |
your Gmail password |
Unless you're using recent mode to download mail to multiple clients, make sure you've opted not to leave messages on the server. Your Gmail settings determine whether or not messages stay on the server, so this setting in your client won't affect how Gmail handles your mail.
Please note that if your client does not support SMTP authentication, you won't be able to send mail through your client using your Gmail address.
Also, if you're having trouble sending mail but you've confirmed that encyrption is active for SMTP in your mail client, try to configure your SMTP server on a different port: 465 or 587. |
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Dr. PatCustomers Post Count:22
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| 18 Nov 2009 07:51 PM |
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Hey Travis,
I like the way you think out of the box on this. This is the same work around that I came up with for my newsletters until onyaktech.com's newest version Axon started allowing per portal defining of SMTP. It just seems to me that there are now modules that allow for this to be customized because the module itself is designed to send lots of emails - that a Social Networking module would definitely want this to be defined - because what is the point of sending reminders and notices if all of the emails land in the spam folder or worse yet never get delivered because they get tagged as spam in route.
Maybe we could put it to a vote and see what percentage of users would be thrilled with this feature.
Just a thought.
Pat |
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Eoghan O'NeillCustomers Post Count:84
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| 19 Nov 2009 04:19 AM |
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I've been using AuthSMTP for over 2 years now to cover my SMTP needs on my DNN install. Their "AuthSMTP 1" plan gives me 1000 emails a month for an annual fee of $24. I haven't been aware of any mails they send being tagged as spam en route. |
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Raghu PandeyRegistered Users Post Count:
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| 28 Nov 2009 05:33 AM |
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Hi Travis,
Does this arrangement allow you to send more than 500 emails per day from your smtp account? as 500 is gmail's sending limit.
- Raghu
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Dr. PatCustomers Post Count:22
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| 28 Nov 2009 05:58 AM |
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One item to consider when using Google Apps as the solution - if you don't setup your spf.txt on you DNS correctly you will still get marked as spam.
The solution we have used for the moment is to use the hosts SMTP and add the hosts url to our spf.txt. This seems to work pretty well. Prior to making this change all emails were getting marked as spam and were simply not being delivered to many. Now with the updates to the spf.txt all mail is getting delivered.
Here is an example from our spf.txt:
v=spf1 a mx include:mail.hostsmtp.com include:aspmx.googlemail.com include:_spf.google.com -all
A couple things to note with the above:
The from email address is hosted with Google Apps - include:aspmx.googlemail.com include:_spf.google.com - covers sending mail from this domain using Google Apps.
The "a mx" covers sending from the website typically but because we are using DNN and a shared SMTP "include:mail.hostsmtp.com" covers sending from the hosts smtp (of course substituting the actual hosts url for hostsmtp).
The -all at the end means that these are the only places to accept mail from however Google recommends using ~all but when we used this (known as a soft all) many of the providers still marked the mail as spam but delivered it (previously they just didn't deliver it).
So regardless of what solution you use for SMTP it is important that you update your spf.txt in your DNS to include the domains that will be delivering your emails.
Cheers,
Pat |
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Mariette KnapCustomers Post Count:645
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| 28 Nov 2009 09:56 AM |
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Posted By Eoghan O'Neill on 19 Nov 2009 04:19 AM
I've been using AuthSMTP for over 2 years now to cover my SMTP needs on my DNN install. Their "AuthSMTP 1" plan gives me 1000 emails a month for an annual fee of $24. I haven't been aware of any mails they send being tagged as spam en route. Hmmm, my site sends out probably 3 to 4000 emails per day... Lucky I have my own mail server  |
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Mariëtte Knap
www.smallbizserver.net |
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Raghu PandeyRegistered Users Post Count:
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| 30 Nov 2009 02:47 AM |
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@Dr Pat - Thanks for that great explanation, i now have a much better understanding of spf. However the issue of not being able to send more than 500 mails per day still exists.
@Mariette - Can you please share with us what settings you did for your mails server, like SPF record, reverse DNS etc. to avoid your outgoing mails being marked as spam? (i am assuming you also send some bulk mails)
- raghu |
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Dr. PatCustomers Post Count:22
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| 06 Dec 2009 10:45 AM |
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Hey Raghu,
The 500 messages per day only exists if you are using smtp.gmail.com. The whole point of using the spf is to allow you to use another smtp but ensure that it doesn't get marked as spam. We send well over 1000 in our newsletter and have no problem. The fact that our primary email accounts are through gmail is the reason that we have to list gmail spf in our spf record. We also list the smtp from our website hosting company in our spf record which allows us to send our email.
Most important is that we use a hard all record -all which indicates that these are the only smtp's that are allowed to send email with our addresses.
So regardless of what SMTP you use, your host, AuthSMTP, gmail, if you are using it to send mail with your domain name as the from address From: me@mydomainname.com - be sure to list the SMTP as allowed in your spf.txt in your DNS record. This will significantly reduce your mail from being marked as spam.
After that you want to ensure that your emails don't contain the classic info that gets marked as spam.
I hope this helps explain.
Cheers,
Pat |
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Peter LordCustomers Post Count:3
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| 24 Jan 2010 01:35 PM |
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Hi Dr. Pat,
I'm trying to configure the Active Forums module to work with Google Apps. Can you tell me the settings you use?
Based on what is in this topic I am not getting things working correctly.
Disguising them of course...
What are your SMTP settings on Host Settings page?
Do you use the Active Forums MailConnector Add-in?
What are the pop3 settings used for the MailConnector?
Regards,
Peter |
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Dr. PatCustomers Post Count:22
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| 24 Jan 2010 02:31 PM |
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Hey Peter,
We are only using our Host SMTP and our host settings are just the IP address of our email server. It is important if using Google Apps to ensure that your settings in Google Apps allows for sending from other SMTP servers (this is the default setting).
One item to note on my previous comments about spf.txt is that we had to change from our hosts domain name to the IP address configured as follows for the spf: ip4:192.0.0.1
We did this because it was much easier for authentication.
We used the host domain name in the spf.txt when our DNN Host SMTP was configured using the host domain. When we changed it to the IP we had to change our spf.txt.
Anywhere in our modules that requires SMTP we now simply use the host IP address. As our server is configured to allow open SMTP from the server this works for us. If your SMTP server requires authentication you would need to enter your username and password as appropriate.
Cheers,
Pat |
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MichaelCustomers Post Count:123
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| 15 Jun 2010 09:56 PM |
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Any idea how to make this work for forum email addresses if you're using Google Apps?
I finally figured out how to make this work...it does with Google Apps standard, no need for a Premium account.
I put together a quick and dirty tutorial here:
http://sgchs.us/Files/tabid/101/Default.aspx
They are still sent from the host account but the "From" field is populated with the Admin email instead of the Host Email. Also, when the user replies, the reply is sent to the admin email and not the host account email.
Good luck. |
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| Michael
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