BoltWire

How do I set up my email?

Posted 07/03/22 by Dan Vis

Basically, to send email from your website, you need to have access to an email account with smtp service. Then just program your mail server information into your site, so it knows where to direct mail it wants to send out.

Here's the steps I recommend taking to get this all working:

Get Your Mail Account

Go to Directnic.com and click that tab that says Products, and then select DirectNic Email. Scroll, down and select the $10/year plan and proceed to payment.

Once that is done, you'll need to create your site email address.

1) Login if you are not, and go to the Dashboard
2) Look for the small box that says email plans and click "Manage".
3) Then click the Add Email button.
4) Enter an email and password (type 2x) then set the quota to 1000 MB. (IE, 1 Gig).

Once you save that information you'll have your account. It takes a second to setup. Then, when it is ready, click the link that says "Setup Mail Client". Here's where you find the information you need to program into your site.

Take a notepad and jot down the following:

1) email address.
2) the password you entered.
3) the incoming server.
4) the POP3 port (don't worry about the IMAP server).
5) the outgoing server
6) the SMTP port

Incoming Mail

Now before going to your site, let's talk about incoming mail--such as when someone responds to an email you send out. How are you going to get that.

You have a couple options. One is to log in to directnec to check your mail. (Notice the access webmail link on this page). But that's not very convenient.

Another option is to setup a forwarder. That's very easy--just click the forward link (same page) and enter your personal email. All incoming mail will start forwarding immediately.

But my preference is to go into gmail and have it pull my mail in automatically. To do this you have to get into the innards of Gmail. Basically, go to gmail and click the gear icon toward the top right of the page, and then click "see all settings" and then "Accounts and Import". There you'll see a section to check mail from other account and a link to add a new account. Just follow the instructions using the information you jotted down above. If you use something other than gmail, your steps should be similar.

Once you have everything entered, try sending an email from your personal account to your new account to make sure it is working. If you get your email, you are good to go!

When you set up your account at mailerlite, you are going to want to make sure you use the same account email. Which means you'll need to be able to confirm the address.

Outgoing Mail

Now, as for enabling email on your site, you just need to add the following fields into your site config page from the information you collected:

sitemail: your@address.com
sitemailname: Your Name
sitemailpassword: yourpassword
sitemailserver: your.server.address
sitemailport: SMTP port

(Note: if your user name is not your email address you can also set sitemailaccount).

You also need to enable the mailer module. To do that, add this line down at the bottom of the site.config page

enableMailer

If you wish, you can also limit this module to certain pages, by altering it to look something like this:

enableMailer: site.email*,welcome.password,welcome.join

It is more secure (in terms of preventing unauthorized email from being sent out) but you also have to remember to enable it on each new page you want to send messages from.

Testing

Once that is done, it's time to test your outgoing mail. Try going to site.email in your site and use the test feature to send yourself a message. If it comes through, you are good to go here as well.

Actually, I haven't yet uploaded the site.email page--will do that shortly. So if you don't see it, check back in an hour! :)


Comments



Posted by Dan Vis on 08/31/20
No problem. I'm not really an expert on all the behind the scenes server stuff. But directnic and siteground have always been super helpful. I just did if for Berith also, and will need to update the other accelerators too. Thanks for pushing to the finish line Kasey!
Posted by Kasey Norton on 08/30/20
Yep! It works!! I appreciate it so much!!
Posted by Dan Vis on 08/30/20
Ok, I think I have it setup for you Kasey. I just had to do a little research to make sure I understood exactly what we needed to.

I was told it might take anywhere from a couple hours up to a day for these settings to go into effect, though it seems it should be more immediately given we haven't changed the nameservers this time.

Please go ahead and give it a try and see if it is working now. If not, you might want to confirm with directnic that it is set correctly. Or just come back in 24 hours and try again then. :)
Posted by Kasey Norton on 08/30/20
Dan I know you are overwhelmed with work right now so I don't expect you to fix this. If there is a way for me to login to my account at siteground and get them to help me change the mx record, I'll happily do it! Stripe and everything wants to verify my email but my email won't receive emails. 😂
Posted by Kasey Norton on 08/28/20
Dan I contact Directnic back and this is what they said:

The domain's host provider is Siteground

"If you intend to use the email hosting account that you purchased from us then you will need to create an MX record that points to our server from the hosting account with Siteground

Please contact Siteground's support and have them update the domain's MX record to point to web143.dnchosting.com

You may need to ask the person that is handling the domain's hosting for you to update the MX record.

The domain has to have an MX record that points to our mail server in order the domain's mail to route through our server"

Any advice?
Posted by Dan Vis on 08/27/20
Why don't you ask DirectNic about that Kasey. Basically, now that your domain is switched over, emails sent to your address are going to DirectNic for instructions about where to go. Your old server must have deleted your former mx records.

Basically, you can have directnic setup an email account and have your email import messages from it (pretty easy if you use gmail). Or you can have directnic just forward incoming email to your account. The former is better. The instructions above give some details. But directnic needs to first get your mx records reset.

Explain your situation to them, and then let me know if they can't help you...
Posted by Kasey Norton on 08/27/20
Dan In checking my email again I found that it's no longer receiving incoming messages. I haven't yet tried the outgoing but I contacted Directnic and they said the MX record had to be updated since a change was made to Siteground.

In order to correct this you will need to update something called an 'MX' record with your new nameserver provider.
Your MX record should point to the Directnic server address with a priority of 0: web143.dnchosting.com

I have no idea how to do this!
Posted by Dan Vis on 08/09/20
No problem! :)
Posted by Ransom Davis on 08/04/20
Thanks for setting this up!
Posted by Dan Vis on 08/03/20
Let me know if you have any questions!




Join Us

To read more posts, or to leave a comment, join our FREE community...

JOIN NOW