I really don’t like having sendmail running on a webserver, but some features of WordPress just don’t work if it can’t send email (user registration, for example). Still, WordPress offers support to send email through external SMTP servers instead if a local mailer.

In /wp-includes/pluggable.php around line 377, change

	$phpmailer->isMail();

to

	$phpmailer->isSMTP();

Then, in /wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php around line 155, set your SMTP host:

    var $Host        = "my.smtphost.com";

You may also need to set a username and password, and tell WP to attempt authentication. You’ll see those in the lines below the hostname variable.

    var $SMTPAuth     = true;
    var $Username     = "username";
    var $Password     = "password";

On the other hand, you could do this via a plugin, perhaps even Callum McDonald’s WP Mail SMTP.

Posted November 17, 2008 by Casey
Categories: Technology. Tags: email, mail, SMTP, wordpress.

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