However, I’ve read somewhere that there might be some problems, because I am based in Slovenia, so our gmail account was created from Slovenia as well whereas our DigitalOcean servers are based in New York.
For example, when I try to log into this email account using a new browser, Gmail requires me to type in a code I receive over SMS message.
And ideas?
Note: and to state the obvious: log in credentials are correct - they were working just 5 days ago.
I’m posting the solution here just in case someone else has the same problem.
What actually helped was to switch 2-step verification ON, and create an App password and insert it in the Discourse POP3 password setting instead of my usual Gmail account password
Yes - that error from gmail is not an authentication failure. It’s asking you to login from a web browser because it think something fishy is going on with the account.
By turning on 2FA you’ve done what gmail was asking - you logged in via a browser.
yeah, but before enabling 2-step verification, logging into via web-browser didn’t help either. Probably because Google cannot make the connection between discourse trying to connect (with DO servers in New York) and me connection from a browser in Slovenia.
I am using Sparkpost to send emails. I created a dedicated basic gmail account only for receiving emails (reply via email) feature.
Everything is working now anyway. As far as I understood from the Gmail documentation, it is a recommended approach to give apps, such as Discourse, special App passwords, that you can generate inside your google account security settings, instead of your ‘human’ google password.