Howto: Enable SMTP for vB 3.0.2/3

[ALcorn]

Originally Posted by zaon

is this SMTP function proprietary to vbulletin, being Jelsoft's hand-made mail-sending code that bypasses normal protocol and only contains the capabilities Jelsoft's programmers have chosen to include?

In fact the support of SSL/TLS should be sincluded not only the server side (i.e. Google server) but yet on the client side, in our case in the VBulletin script. So if there's no SSL/TLS support included in VBulletin no communication via SSL/TLS protocol will be possible.

That mean its probably impossible actually (please, correct me if I am wrong on this point) to have VBulletin send mail via Google SMTP service.

Keep in mind that the SMTP e-mail future is not actually supported by Jelsoft.

[zaon]

So has anyone out there got this SMTP function to work with web-based email of any kind (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc.)?

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by zaon

So has anyone out there got this SMTP function to work with web-based email of any kind (yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc.)?

Do any of them support SMTP ?

[ALcorn]

Originally Posted by Zachery

Do any of them support SMTP ?

Yes, gmail support the SMTPS.

In fact, I looked more closely to the mail.php and found that the function fsockopen() is used. That mean (at least in theory) we can establish a secure connection via SSL if we prefixe the server name with ssl:// AND we have PHP version better than 4.3.0 AND it was compiled with openssl support. Actually, my host does not have PHP compiled with openssl, so i didn't tried it.

[zaon]

Originally Posted by Zachery

Do any of them support SMTP ?

Yeah, most do. Like yahoo supports SMTP via all sorts of mail clients if you pay the $19/year for the bigger mail box, etc.

Google's Gmail supports it for free but requires it be SSL and authenticated, and even has step-by-step instructions posted online for every type of mail client you can think of.


@ALcorn: Thanks, man :-) So you mean like use:
var $smtpHost = "ssl://mail.domain.com";
??

And I do have PHP 4.3.10, but not sure about openssl compiling..guess i'd have to try it.

[code-frog]

In the example you post shouldn't the smtpuser and password be in quotes?

I get errors unless I have those items quoted. Even with quotes this isn't working. Ideas?

P.S. - Running this on a Windows box. UGH!

[bi11i]

Even with quotes this isn't working. Ideas?

so are you not getting any errors with the quotes? any more info? any logs, etc when you're getting no errors, but no functionality.....?

[Viks]

This setting worked for me perfectly. thanks Zachery

============
var $smtpHost = "smtp.example.com";
var $smtpPort = 25;
var $smtpUser = "myemail@address.com";
var $smtpPass = *********;
var $smtpSocket = null;
=================

[zaon]

Ok, I upgraded vbulletin so I could install this hack.

I ran into same errors until i put double quotes around all three string items, leaving just port and socket without quotes.

But then i got that Fatal error: Call to undefined function:
errormessage() in /home/sites/www/zaon.org/includes/mail.php on line 218
error which of course points back to just this line:
return errorMessage("Unexpected response from SMTP server");
which I assume has something to do with this hack and the mail server not playing nice.

So, in order to test and then use this feature, if ANYONE has this working can you please post your account settings? And by that I obviously don't mean your username/pass, but rather which settings and which web-based SMTP email provider (yahoo, hotmail, whatever) you're using.

[code-frog]

If you are running on Windows 2003 or a Windows Server you need to find your php mail.ini file and change it's smtp server to: 127.0.0.1 and it's smtp user to a real account on the message board domain. I did that and it worked fine. I also had to allow "SMTP Relaying for authenticated users" on SMTP server. It works about 80% of the time now and the other 20% is a configuration problem on my server that I'm slowly tuning out. I've purposely left out the location of the mail.ini file for php because it may not be the same on every server. I use a program called PLESK to admin my windows server and CPANEL to admin my Linux server.

- Rex