Well this question was asked to me for more than a couple of times now. So I thought of documenting it here, instead of answering them individually. 
Long time readers of my blog would know that I use Google App for email. Ever since I moved to Linode for hosting, I stopped running a mail daemon in my server, and instead choose to use Gmail’s SMTP server for sending email.
There were two reasons for it. First most email providers ignore or mark as spam, emails sent from non-SMTP servers. Second, removing mail daemon from server will save some resources and will increase the over all performance of my server.
Using SMTP in WordPress
For WordPress there is an excellent Plugin called WP Mail SMTP, which can be used to send email through Google’s SMTP servers.
Download and install the Plugin and in the settings page you have to set the following options.
- SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
- SMTP Port: 465
- Encryption: Use SSL encryption
- Authentication: Yes
- Username: Your full Gmail address or Google App email
- Password: your account password
You can also checkout the following screenshot for reference.
I am also working on a Plugin to log all emails sent by WordPress. Expect it to be released soon (Update: The Plugin to log all emails is ready. It is called Email Log and you can download it from the Plugins page.)
how is the smtp log plugin going?
@Scott,
It is available here I have also added the link in the post.
it doesn’t work anymore with wordpress 2.9
Are you getting any specific error message.
Sorry, actually it was crashed during upgrading but it has fixed now. And I use Joomla now, I’ve done with WordPres, hehe..
Btw, you don’t need to use plugin as to it will decrease website performance. Just configure wp-includes/pluggable.php and class-phpmailer.php.
I think Joomla is more fast than WordPress and has more function,
.
This is a very subjective sentence and I will not get into it
The reason why we should use a Plugin instead of changing wp-includes/pluggable.php is because, you don’t need to worry about it while updating WordPress. When compared with Joomla, WordPress get’s update pretty frequently
Absolutely right, that’s why I use Joomla
. Well i just need another experience indeed.
While new version of WordPress comes up there are usually some bugs or errors like one I’ve posted in WordPress forum about Category Slug. Maybe that’s why they always go with updates
.
However WordPress is the #1 opensource, because everybody uses it, phew.
Nice I will try it with google apps