Confusion about the email server before installing discourse

Installation
1

Hello Discourse Community,

I have been trying to set up discourse and so far I have been unable to do so. I am not a computer person. I tried using Mailgun AND Sparkpost. I have been unable to verify my sending domains. Are there links and instructions i could follow as my search in the forums has been inconclusive. I install discourse properly all the way but I wasn’t able to send my first email to confirm my admin email. I have deleted the droplet and started again several times.

My domain is in Google Domains, and I do not currently have a host but wanted to use Digital Ocean. I think that once I get the email server up and running I can absolutely install it as its not a big deal to me. I am just unable to get the email server up and running. In order to access the Google Admin account I need to use G-Suite? I tried using G-Suite as it gives me an email but I am unsure if this is what I needed to do. I suspect the problem lies with properly connecting the Google Domains DNS to the Sparkpost/Mailgun server. Furthermore I couldnt confirm my sending domain so it has to be this right?

At this point I am unsure what needs to be done since I have done some many different things. Can someone ELi5 this whole process? I have undone everything thus far to be able to start again from scratch to make sure that i do not miss any steps.

:smiley: thank you for your time to help out a noob.

2

I did not quite follow what the actual issue is, but MailGun is easier to setup out of these two. They also have pretty good documentation. You need to add a couple of entries to your DNS records and they have to tool to verify that you got it right.

https://help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/202052074-How-do-I-verify-my-domain-

3 Likes
3

Hello ljpp

Thank you for your response. I have managed to have my domain verified through Mailgun. I cant send or receive emails yet though, I am wondering if I misunderstood the instructions. I do not have a host or anything up on my website yet. Do I need to have an email server on my domain/site? So if I am doing it through digital ocean I need to set up an email server first connect it to mailgun, so it can send/receive stuff and THEN i can proceed to install discourse. is this correct? thanks!

4

MailGun is a mail server. You create a domain there, and use the username & password in the Discourse setup procedure.

You do not need to install a mail server on your host. Just follow the Discourse installation instructions to the letter.

2 Likes
5

thank you for your help