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I have several other posts on how to improve the reliability of email sent via wp_mail and how to troubleshoot your WordPress email settings, most of which has focused on the sending end. A common followup problem is email sent from your WordPress site ending up in the user’s spam folder. What can you do to your WordPress email settings to make your sent message less likely to be flagged as spam by the receiver?
The answer is that your WordPress email settings matter. [Read more…]
This is a continuation of the thoughts presented in the article “Testing the wp_mail Function.” That article focused on how to actually check your WordPress email configuration with direct test of the wp_mail function to be sure that the function itself is working. This is a good place to start if you are troubleshooting because if the function itself is not working, you need to track that down first.
If you have determined that wp_mail is operable, it is then probable that emails are being generated. Knowing this, the next step is to consider other elements of your WordPress email configuration to track down why emails are not being sent or received.
WordPress sends email using wp_mail, a function that for all practical purposes operates like php’s mail. It is a way for your site to send email via a PHP script.
In order to determine what your problems might be, it is important to understand the potential email configuration requirements. Some issues could be server-based, others could be not understanding restrictions by your host.
The first thing to know is what your host’s policies are for sending email via web scripts. If you spend a lot of time trying to track down problems before even knowing if you are in compliance with your host’s email policies, you could be wasting a lot of time.
Some hosts require that any server-side email script send with a “from” address that is an actual email address. This may seem basic, but I’ve had a lot of support inquiries that didn’t bother to check this. WordPress by default sends email from a generic address “wordpress@yourdomain.com”. If your host has a requirement that you send from a valid email address and you don’t have a wordpress@yourdomain.com email configured, then your site can’t send email.
This isn’t a requirement with all hosts, but you should check to see if it is a requirement of yours. If this is a requirement, there are some things you can do to change the default “from” address. See the following:
Another commonly overlooked issue that is similar is that some hosts require you send with a valid “from” header. Again, the WordPress default configuration doesn’t cover this – it sends email without headers.
There are other headers that can help prevent your message from being rejected as spam. Making sure that the return-path header is not only a valid address, but matches the “from” address will take you a long way in this regard. And you can take care of this either by sending through an SMTP server or just filtering the phpmailer to make this match your “from” address.
In general, on shared hosting, the email process is shared, too. If another user on your host has a script that is tying up the email server, that is going to effect your site (and therefore your email script).
For those running WordPress on shared hosts, the issue most often is that email is delayed (sometimes significantly), not that it is inoperable. But it is important to know if this is something you are likely to be effected by. Just because someone doesn’t receive a message within seconds does not by itself mean that the message is not being sent. It could be delayed.
Sometimes, the issue is that certain messages are simply blocked because of an addressing issue. Emails coming into one of the major email provider domains (hotmail, aol, gmail, yahoo) can get flagged for a number of reasons.
If email from wp_mail is not getting delivered, you may need to consider is it not getting through to everyone? Or is this limited to certain domains? Getting blocked or blacklisted by a specific host could be an issue.
The simplest way around all of this is to use a valid email account sent through an SMTP server. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and sending through an SMTP server simply means you have set up a real email address on your system and you are allowing the web based script (wp_mail) to connect to the server with appropriate account credentials. This will satisfy most hosting requirements and also help you avoid system bottlenecks on shared hosting.
My usual solution for this is a plugin called WP Mail SMTP. There are a few other plugins out there for this purpose as well. Although not as popular (yet) as WP Mail SMTP, Easy WP SMTP looks promising. Another is WP SMTP. Using one of these plugins is an easy way to change your WordPress email configuration to send email via SMTP.
Of course, if you’d like to do it without a plugin, you can do that without too much trouble as well.
No matter which way you choose to approach it, SMTP is a more reliable and more stable way of sending email through WordPress.
For more information on testing, troubleshooting, and changing your WordPress email configuration for wp_mail, here are some additional posts:
One common question I often hear regarding WordPress email configuration is, “How do I change the email address from wordpress@mydomain.com?” I suspect that most people are unaware that WordPress has its own function called wp_mail() for sending email and that it has a default address that it sends email from. If they are aware, most users opt for changing this with a plugin.
WordPress has no ability to manage email settings through the admin panel, but that does not mean you can’t manage the email configuration at all. It actually is very flexible. You can even change your WordPress email configuration to send via an SMTP server; a method much more reliable than the generic email script. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
If your sole aim is to change the email “from” address to something that is not the default value (wordpress@yourdomain.com), this is far to simple for using a plugin (unless you have complicated needs and want more control over email configuration in the WordPress admin panel).
There are quite a few plugins that do this, and if you feel more comfortable doing it that way, by all means, add another plugin to the list of things your blog needs to load. But if you are brave enough to do something quick, easy, and lightweight, then read on!
WordPress relies on a function called wp_mail() to send email. This function is essentially a wrapper for the phpmailer class. The problem is that the wp_mail default email “from” address cannot be configured via the WordPress admin panel. But the fortunate thing is that this function and its related functions are both pluggable and can be filtered. Our example here is to simply opt for a filter.
wp_mail() relies on some other outside information, some of which is wp_mail_from (an email address) and wp_mail_from_name (the real name given to the email address). Since that is all we want to change, we are just going to filter those.
Add a filter for the email address using ‘add_filter’:
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from', 'my_mail_from' );
function my_mail_from( $email ) {
return "change-this-to-your-email-address";
}
Now add a filter for the name of the email address:
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from_name', 'my_mail_from_name' );
function my_mail_from_name( $name ) {
return "My Name";
}
That’s great, but what do I do with it?
I’m glad you asked. Add these two filters and their accompanying functions to your theme’s functions.php file. You don’t even need to mess with a file editor and ftp for this. I would simply go to the Appearance > Editor menu in the WP Admin Panel, then find ‘functions.php’ in the list of theme files on the right. Add these filters and you are in business.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And no bloated plugin to slow down your site!
If you’d rather use a plugin to handle WordPress email configuration instead of the functions file, that’s covered in this post.
For more information on testing, troubleshooting, and changing your WordPress email configuration for wp_mail, here are some additional posts: