IP.Board and Google Apps Email

[Nathan]

So with IP.Board, by default, the email system is setup to us PHP mail from your host. For most people this probably works fine, but for me I didn't want to use the email service on my server. I wanted to us Google Apps . You would think it would be as simple as dropping in the SMTP information and your done. Well you would be wrong Turns out there is a little more involved. I just got mine all setup today, so I wanted to let others know how to do this as well. I didn't find any information out there on the net about it, but the support staff at IPB helped me through it.

 

You need to set the Override SMTP host up a little different since gmail requires SSL on outgoing mail.

Override SMTP Host: tls://smtp.gmail.com

 

You need to set the port as well to this custom one.

Override SMTP Port 465

 

Enhanced SMTP HELO needs to be changed to EHLO.

Enhanced SMTP HELO EHLO

 

The rest you setup as you normally would.

[sk_josh]

Hi Nathan,

 

I recently set up gmail (google apps for business) on my large IPB forum. I got everything to work ok however I ran into 2 problems and am curious if you have as well.

 

1. Some of the emails getting sent out are identified as spam by Google, and thus are not sent. not good, since I have no idea how to make sure this doesn't happen. It seems to be mostly a problem when someone posts a new thread and people subscribed to that forum are notified.

 

2. The free version only allows for 100 emails to be sent through smtp. (How did i miss this when I signed up!!!) It appears if I upgrade I can get 2,000 emails a day.... but my concern is that still wont be enough for my growing board.

 

The registration email I got from signing up to this site was not from google. Have you switched to using GoDaddy or something else?

 

Does anyone know of a free or reasonable service that would work well for me? I am looking into Amazon Email Service but am still unsure of the costs and whether this will be a good alternative.

 

Thanks

[Nathan]

Hey Josh

 

1. Nope never had any of the mail marked as spam

2. I ran into the same issue, after reading about upgrading I found out it's only increased to 2k as well. If your board is very big at all and has decent activity that can be eaten up real quickly. Never found a solution to this either.

 

I ended up going back with the default php mailer for a few reasons:

1. The 200 or 2k limit on daily smtp relays, I would/could possibly hit this and as the board grows it's just not a viable solution

2. I noticed that on threads that had say 2-3 or more replies I would use the quick reply box, type my response and hit submit. The little loading icon would just go and go and go for about 7 or 8 seconds then the post would show up. Turns out if you use any outside smtp it has to contact that server and work on sending the mail before the post finishes. I didn't want my board to look as though something was delayed like that and was a pain to post as it took sooo long.

 

I ended up just solving my problem I originally had with the default php mailer. It was on Godaddy's end the outgoing mail server had to be changed in EXIM I believe as the default was holding onto mail sometimes for up to 1 hour. (Big deal if they are registration emails.)

 

Hope that helped let me know if you need anymore clarification. BTW just out of curiosity why did you want to use Google Apps for your email?