SMTP-Auth & Gmail Issues

[zhoos]

btw - yes we NEED to keep a copy of email confirmations that the customer has received.

Many thanks all for helping! Really appreciate it!

[DrByte]

It's unclear from your post what exactly's going on. You seem to be mixing up your hosting account, your Google account, something about the stone age, and calendars and workgroups ... all while complaining about emails not arriving for just certain recipients.
Perhaps you could clarify with a lot more detail, including but not limited to the following:

a) who is your hosting company? You mentioned "My website is hosted with a webhosting company" ... and then you said " and remove our Google Hosting account" ... So ... which is it?

b) is "sales@my_domain.com" an email address on your hosting account "hosted with a webhosting company"? or is it a Google email account?

c) what is your "sent FROM" email address set to? Is that a valid email account on the server running your Zen Cart store? or is it on another server? or is it a Google account? or what?

d) What have you set for "Emails must send from known domain"?

e) Have you read the email troubleshooting article? http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.p...Email_Problems Have you implemented the various troubleshooting suggestions? What were the results?

f) Have you involved one or more of your hosting companies to find out where your emails are actually going when they allegedly don't arrive to you?

[zhoos]

Hi DrByte - thanks for the help!

I apologize. Let me try to be clear again.

a. Our webhost server is with CYBERAXIS. It's something like a HostMonster or GoDaddy.
Our emails are with Google Accounts. You know, you go into google.com/a/ and direct all your email accounts there. So right now my mail@my_domain.com is with Google. Having a google account for my domain name allows us to have emails using the gmail front end, host our emails with the google servers (7gbs right now I think), use the google calendar system, and have google documents for use and collaboration with other people with the same domain name.

b. sales@my_domain.com is a google email account. The domain name is registered with the webhosting company, but ... how do I explain... we used Google Accounts for our emails and put our MX entry to ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM and now all our emails are hosted on Google.

c. My sent from address is "info@my_domain.com" and it's a valid email that I've set up in Google Accounts. In fact, all emails that are currently being sent out via PHP now, for example, the Welcome to MY_WEBSITE email, or Customer Confirmation Emails all reflect that the emails come from info@my_domain.com.

d. I've tried both YES and NO Didn't work on all email transport methods. Currently selecting PHP the "Emails must send from known domain" is set to YES, and my customers get emails but none of my accounts get a copy of emails sent, or emails via the CONTACT US link.

e. Yes - I've read this, and even saw the section of "Google Gmail", which is sad. Setting up SMTPAUTH with the recommended settings did not address the issue at all. The Test Customer did not receive any emails using the settings.

f. Sad to say, my hosting company hasn't gotten back to me yet about where the emails are going, but am still waiting for replies.


If hosting our emails at Google Accounts denies Zen Cart from automatically sending ourselves emails, what solutions do we have? What should we do?

[DrByte]

Sounds like a classic case of spoofing your email address. You're pretending to send emails from my_domain.com when your email accounts are really hosted elsewhere entirely.
And, thus, an MTA somewhere in the chain of delivering the emails is checking to see whether the server you're sending from is allowed to pretend to be you, and rejecting things when they look wrong.

Maybe you need to make some adjustments to your SPF record to allow your webserver to impersonate your google email account.

[zhoos]

I don't get it - from the reading of this thread, many people have the same problem as I do. So does that mean they all have the same problem of "spoofing the email address"? Is that what happens when we use google accounts as our email host?

What does it mean to "make some adjustments to your SPF record to allow your webserver to impersonate your google email account"?

Yes - I'm not well versed in server tech, php etc. Sorry...

[DrByte]

SPF is described as:

SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s). This means that only mail sent through this server will appear as valid mail from your domain(s) when the SPF records are checked.

[zhoos]

Okay I guess I've been using the term "Google Account" too much. I did a search and it's really "Google Apps."

[zhoos]

I'VE GOT A WORKAROUND FOR THIS PROBLEM!

Any emails that you need Zen Cart 1.38 to auto-send to you, should NOT be in Google Apps.

For example, the email address you put for the following:
Email Address (Displayed to Contact you)
Email Address (sent FROM)
Send Copy of Order Confirmation Emails To
Send Copy of Create Account Emails To
Send Copy of Tell a Friend Emails To
Send Copy of Customer GV Send Emails To
Send Copy of Customer Admin GV Mail Emails To
Send Copy of Admin Discount Coupon Mail Emails To -
Send Copy of Customer Admin Discount Coupon Mail Emails
Send Copy of Admin Orders Status Emails To
Send Notice of Pending Reviews Emails To

IF YOU WANT TO USE SMTPAUTH:
1. For Email Transport Method, set it to SMTPAUTH. Any other format will not allow you to both SEND and RECEIVE.
2. Set up these email addresses in your CPanel, or your WebHosting admin site.
3. Once done, they should have SMTP Host, Server Port info for you. You need to use their NON-SSL info. For me it was mail.mydomain.com and port 25.

IF YOU WANT TO USE PHP:
1. For Email Transport Method, set it to PHP.
2. Set up the above email addresses in your CPanel, or your WebHosting admin site.
3. YOU DO NOT NEED to put in your SMTP Host, Server Port info, etc.
4. Run some tests, and log into your account on your CPanel or Webhost sites and see if you received the emails.

IF YOU STILL WANT TO USE GOOGLE APPS:
You can use them for your personal emails i.e. [email protected] that is hosted on Google apps. However, if you configured your Zen Cart to automatically send you any emails into any email account hosted by Google Apps, you will NOT receive it.

Which means, for example [email protected] (where you receive system messages) or [email protected] (where you receive sales confirmations) or wadever that you configured for the "SEND COPY" categories, will never be received on Google Apps. The emails will instead, appear in your webhost-based email account.

Remember, the email accounts you have in Google Apps will never receive any system messages from Zen Cart. You can use them only for personal emails only (at least for 1.38 version).

Let's hope to see full compatibility for both Google Apps and Zen Cart in the next version (1.4)!

[DrByte]

So, you're basically saying ... don't use Google Apps for your webstore email addresses. Instead, use traditional email accounts ... that is, an email account ON the same server as your store. That way your store isn't trying to impersonate email from another domain (since impersonation is seen as spam and gets rejected).

That's the same thing I advised earlier.

I'm glad you sorted it out in your head :)

[essavant]

So, you're basically saying ... don't use Google Apps for your webstore email addresses. Instead, use traditional email accounts ... that is, an email account ON the same server as your store. That way your store isn't trying to impersonate email from another domain (since impersonation is seen as spam and gets rejected).

That's the same thing I advised earlier.

I'm glad you sorted it out in your head :)

FYI, Not sure if something has changed in the mean time, but I've gotten Google Apps Mail to work! It seems to work great too!

PHP transport mode
Set host (cPanel) MX server entry for my account to the previously mentioned Google servers:

1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
10 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM


SMTP server to Google's: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 465

I made sure to set all my e-mail address entry's to the same as my login: [email protected] (an additional account I set up just for this purpose - I then forward all mail to a different acct.

www.soclicheboutique.com/store

Thanks to everyone who responded to this thread until now - its what got me here.