email problems on set up

[wakewatcher]

I'm a SMF newbie. I do have some experience with CMS and am using CMSMS for a few sites. I've also taught myself some php/mysql/html/ajax enough to get the job done. Anyway I just setup an instance of SMF and it seemed to go smoothly. (This was done by my web hosting company.)  Anyway I set it up for email registration activation but it never sends the email.  I then went to the features configuration section and see that it was set to php mail. (I assume the parameters aren't important if using php mail.)  I also then sent an newsletter to all members and again nothing. I checked the FAQ  for suggestions and so from that decided to check if php mail was enabled on my server and so wrote a little php program to send mail.  It worked.  So my server is set up ok.  But alas that doesn't help.  Any ideas? thx.

[ThorstenE]

go to Admin - Server-Settings and check "Webmaster Email Address" .. is this an existing email account on your host? this address will be used from SMF when sending mails.

[wakewatcher]

Thanks for your response.  I'm not sure what you are asking.  It's an existing email account but not one associated with my host.  However it is the same email address that I use when testing on  this host using the php mail function.  (I simply copied the example, (changed the from: email address to make it mine) from php.net and it works fine.)  Maybe I'm not testing it right.  (I've got an instance of cmsmadesimple on the same host and in its email configuration admin section it has a email test capability.)  What I've been trying here is trying to send email using the newsletter capability.  I notice that the message I sent ends up in "my messages" but not actually emailed.  Is there a better way to test that email is working.  I also tried to use the smtp capability and set it to exactly like I have set in CMSMS but still no joy.  hmmm...

[ThorstenE]

Thanks for your response.  I'm not sure what you are asking.  It's an existing email account but not one associated with my host. 

That may be the problem.. your host isn't allowed to send emails for an account not associated with it.   Most servers don't accept mails from your server when the MX-Record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record) isn't set for this server.

Try it with SMTP instead. the infos for SMTP are the same you are using in a mail-client like Outlook, Thunderbird etc.

[wakewatcher]

That may be the problem.. your host isn't allowed to send emails for an account not associated with it.   Most servers don't accept mails from your server when the MX-Record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_record) isn't set for this server.

Try it with SMTP instead. the infos for SMTP are the same you are using in a mail-client like Outlook, Thunderbird etc.

Thanks for your patience on this but I'm not totally following you on this.  As I mentioned above I wrote a small stand alone php file using the same email address and ran it on the same host using the php mail function and it works.  I also have an instance of cmsms on that host with smtp mail and it works.  I tried with the same smtp settings (although there are a lot fewer paramters with smf than cmsms) and it still doesn't work.  This installation was done using my host's installation program.  Are there some configuration files I should check?  Also you will see that there is another thread with the same problem so seems that somethings amiss.  (Or at least its not idiot proof.)  Again I've used php mail in my own scripts and it works fine.  What is the best way to test mail?  Since there is no test mechanism outright I try using the newsletter function and send a message.  It ends up on my private smf inbox but is not sent via email.

[ThorstenE]

mhh, change it back to php-mail,  can you PM me a link to your forum and the mail adress in Admin- Server-Settings? I'll register an account on your then and check my mailserver log for a contact from your server.

[wakewatcher]

Thanks.  I just pm'd you.  As you see I'm now having even more serious error as I'm getting a 500 Internal Server Error.  I'll wait for a recommendation but maybe I need to start over and not use the host's installation script but do it from scratch.

[wakewatcher]

I contacted my host (sitelutions.com) and the apache server died so they restarted it.  The mail still didn't work so I tried it on my godaddy account and it seems to be working there so now I'm just having some fun with it.  Thanks for your help.