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Originally Posted by BGrun08
If I have a gmail account and and internet connection i can use that as an SMTP server?
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Yes, very probably. If you have e-mail set up and working with a program like Outlook or Thunderbird, then you can get all the settings you need by looking at how that program is set up. In fact, that's the sensible thing to do: set up your mail program so it can send mail, then copy the settings to your web application.
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I am unfamiliar with networking completely, I for some reason was under the impression I had to use the e-mail from my ISP in order to have a server, or I had to set up something special with google for it to work.
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Stricty speaking, what you need is access to a SMTP server that allows you to send mail. And here the word "server" actually means a piece of software. You can install a SMTP server on your PC and use that if you like--in fact, prior to version 7, Microsoft IIS used to be supplied with a built-in SMTP server that your web applications could use to send mail.
But it's probably going to be a lot easier to use your ISP's SMTP server: it's already set up, you know it works, and you have access to it. You don't
have to use your ISP's SMTP server, but any SMTP server you choose to use must tick all the same boxes: it must be set up, it must work, and you must have access to it.
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Is there not any issues with setting up a port number for the receiving e-mail address or anything like that?
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No. Your web application might well need to
send e-mail, but it's really hard to think of any reason it would want to
receive e-mail. So you only need to look at outbound (SMTP) settings; you needn't bother with inbound (POP3 or IMAP) settings.
To clarify just a little: sending mail is one activity; receiving mail is another completely separate activity. Of course, your e-mail program needs to do both, and it makes them look like a single seamless thing. But in reality they're two separate activities, and your web application is only interested in one of them--i.e. sending.
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Also, through another forum I was looking at, on a topic only somewhat similar, I saw something mentioned about the receiving e-mail server possibly recognizing SMTP as spam and not allowing the message through? Any truth to anything like that?
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Yes, it's true but only under certain circumstances. Some mail systems (for example, the servers run by AOL) check that mail is being sent from the "correct" mail server and reject it if it isn't. For example, if you send an e-mail with the "From" address set to
[email protected], the receiving server can make a DNS call to find out what IP address mail sent from widgets.com
should officially be coming from, and if the IP address that the mail is
actually coming from doesn't match the IP address it
should be coming from, the receiving server assumes that the message is spam and rejects it. That's because an enormous amount of spam comes from SMTP servers whose IP addresses don't match the domains the mail is supposedly coming from.
This is likely to affect you if you install a SMTP server on your PC and use it to send mail. It won't happen if you send mail through your ISP's SMTP server using your own e-mail address.
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I know I can move on without completing this, but I just don't like leaving lose ends.
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Well, I hope this has helped!
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