Pop Before Smtp

[rowanp]

Hi

 

I just want to inform people that the TCH servers use the POP before SMTP protocol that controls the email relay based on successful POP logins. What this means is that you cannot send an email through a script (using sendmail) without first having it verified. How you have it verified if you are trying for instance to send a "confirmation email" to a new user is a mystery to me. I spent almost the whole day trying to get an answer about this from support, so just want to save you the effort.

 

rowanp.

[LisaJill]

You can use scripts to send mail, people do it all thetime. PHPBB for instance can send confirmation emails, I know my site sends emails to users without problems.

 

I can't program, so I'm not really sure how this is accomplished, but the major packages shouldn't have any problems sending email.

 

What program are you attempting to use? We can go from there. =)

[rowanp]

Well, it is a customized program that I had created for my website. There is obviously a way round the protocol, and these major programs probably have a solution. Of course, the protocol is designed to prevent spamming and that is always a good thing, but not at the expense of legitimate e-commerce websites.

[Ayman]

Hmm, AFAIK, POP3 and SMTP has nothing to do with each other, SMTP uses its own auth scheme.

 

What language is your program programmed in? You can always use built-in functions like mail in PHP, or call the sendmail binary to send emails.

[LisaJill]

Well, for mail clients they *can* It is possible for a server to make it so that you have to check incoming mail within a certain time frame before trying to send. And if you haven't, it won't let you send.

 

I'm actually not sure if TCH is set up that way. But scripts are *definitely not* restricted by it. You could have a look at some of the form mail scripts (like dodos mail) or the open source boards (like phpbb) to see how they deal with it. =) I think that they do use PHPmail as opposed to smtp - but this is so far out of my realm of knoweldge that it's best I stop talking.

[TCH-Rob]

I run osCommerce and have no issues with it and have another site that can send without issues as well using a simple PHP script/form.

[MikeJ]

Hi

 

I just want to inform people that the TCH servers use the POP before SMTP protocol that  controls the email relay based on successful POP logins. What this means is that you cannot send an email through a script (using sendmail) without first having it verified. How you have it verified if you are trying for instance to send a "confirmation email" to a new user is a mystery to me. I spent almost the whole day trying to get an answer about this from support, so just want to save you the effort.

 

rowanp.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

POP before SMTP (or SMTP Authentication... we support both) is only required if you attempting to send email through the server from a remote host (they take affect when you connect to the SMTP port from a remote host).

 

Scripts running on the server are allowed to send email as you without authenticating first. And if your script is calling sendmail (and not creating a direct SMTP connection) as you state, you won't even be affected by SMTP authentication as you aren't using SMTP yet.

 

If you believe their's a problem with your environment, feel free to submit a help desk ticket and someone will take a look at it. If you want to post or PM me the ID of the one you had open, I'll take a look at it to see why support wasn't able to give you a satisfactory response.

 

If you are having problems with your script, why not describe the problem here and someone might be able to help you out?

[rowanp]

Thanks all for your help. I have solved the problem.

 

regards

 

rowanp.