thanks for the reply, Jay. I uncommented that custom command and set it to look like:
- exec: rails r "SiteSetting.notification_email='forum@news4starstuffs.com'"
but no love. Same behaviour as before, connects to SMTP server, “sending mail . . .”, sending failed.
I came across this other post from someone using the same shared hosting provider as I am (A2Hosting) and they struggled at this same step for 3 weeks.
Any other ideas for what I can try? Or should I maybe look at using a third party SMTP service (Google, or try to find a reasonable rate from one of the paid options like Mailgun or Sparkpost) (assuming it’s possible or not incredibly difficult for an idiot to get it to work considering I’m already using @news4starstuffs.com email addresses from my A2Hosting website & services that I don’t want to interfere with)?