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Many of the support requests we receive are related to email, so this article is intended to help you diagnose various e-mail issues you may encounter. E-mail logins It's important that you, and your users, understand how to log in to check your mail. Across all of our servers, whether the operating system is Windows or Linux, or the control panel is Plesk, Ensim or cPanel, the login for a given email address is the full email address. For example, if your domain name is mychurch.org, and you've created a mailbox named pastor, the login to retrieve email is pastor@mychurch.org, not just pastor. The one exception to this rule is the admin user for a cPanel site. The admin user must log in with just the username, not the full email address. Password Of course you'll need to know the password for the mailbox to access your mail. If you've forgotten the password, the site admin can reset it via the site control panel. Mail server name You'll also need to know the name of your mail server. This is always "mail." + your domain name, i.e. mail.mychurch.org. SMTP authentication (outgoing mail) In order to send mail through your site's mail server, you must configure your mail software for SMTP authentication. This setting will generally be found somewhere near the outgoing server properties in your mail software, and may be labeled "This server requires authentication", "My outgoing (SMTP) server requires authentication", or something similar. SMTP authentication should be configured to use the same login and password that is used to retrieve e-mail. ISP blocking port 25? If configuring SMTP authentication correctly does not resolve mail sending issues, it's very possible that your ISP is blocking port 25, (the smtp port), to external servers. Many larger ISPs have done this to force their customers to send email through their servers, in an effort to cut down on their customers connecting to external mail server to send spam. This also allows the ISP's mail server to pre-scan outgoing mail for possible spam content. If you think your ISP may be blocking port 25, give them a call and confirm, or check out your ISP web site for information. Confirming a port 25 block If you have trouble confirming a port 25 block through your ISP, (we know how ISP technical support can be hit or miss), here's a simple test you can perform on your own to confirm it for yourself: Assuming you're running a Windows operating system, open a dos or command prompt, and run this command: telnet [your mail server name] 25 For example: telnet mail.mychurch.org 25 (If you're running a version of Windows earlier than 2000 or XP, place a colon between the mail server name and port, i.e. "telnet mail.mychurch.org:25"). This will launch Windows' built in telnet client, which will attempt to establish a connection to your mail server. If a connection can be established, you should see a text response from the server, which will look something like this: 220-web24.mediaserve.com ESMTP Exim 4.44 #1 Thu, 03 Feb 2005 11:55:39 -0600
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail. If you get a connection error, you've confirmed that port 25 is blocked. If you receive a response, similar to the above example, from the mail server, port 25 is not blocked. Note that if port 25 is blocked, it doesn't necessarily have to be your ISP blocking it. Check your local firewall and/or network router if your ISP insists they are not blocking port 25. What to do if port 25 is blocked by your ISP If you find that external port 25 smtp is blocked by your ISP, you have a couple choices: - Edit your mail account and change the smtp port from 25 to 587. Port 587 is a standard alternate message submission port which all of our servers are configured to use, so you can work around port 25 blocks and still send mail through your site's mail server.
- Use your ISP's mail server for outgoing mail. In your mail software, simply replace the outgoing server properties with those applicable to your ISP's mail server, but leave the incoming server set to your personal mail server.
Outgoing mail will still be marked as from your personal address, and replies will be sent to your personal address. There is no need to be concerned that using your ISP's mail server for outgoing mail will look or act any differently than if you were able to use your personal mail server.
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