Confusion about the email server before installing discourse

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

mercadocapote is having trouble setting up an email server for Discourse and has tried using Mailgun and Sparkpost. They are unable to verify their sending domains and are unsure about the process. ljpp suggests that Mailgun is easier to set up and provides a link to their documentation. mercadocapote successfully verifies their domain with Mailgun but is still having issues sending and receiving emails. ljpp clarifies that Mailgun is a mail server in itself and doesn’t require setting up an email server on the host. They advise mercadocapote to follow the Discourse installation instructions to set up the email server.

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

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.

5

thank you for your help