TonyG
August 24, 2024, 9:27pm
8
Just keeping this thread updated with progress…
I just found this documentation to setup bounce handling:
Discourse is all about enabling civilized discussion. While plenty of people like a web interface, e-mail is still the “hub” of many people’s online lives. That’s why sending e-mail is so important, and when you’re sending e-mail, you really want to be able to receive it, too. There are several reasons why:
If e-mails “bounce” (they can’t be delivered for some reason), you need to know about that. Repeatedly sending e-mails that bounce will get your e-mails flagged as spam. Receiving e-ma…
Setting up bounces handling
Discourse uses the Variable envelope return path (VERP) technique to handle bouncing e-mails.
To enable VERP, set the “reply by email address” site setting with an email address template that uses the + sign. The default of
replies+%{reply_key}@discourse.example.com
… works fine. If you are using your own or your company’s email server, then, that’s it
The images here are also extremely helpful:
the reply_by_email_address is not used as the from address but the envelope-from, specifically so bounces work
Here’s an image that demonstrates how each address is used. The addresses themselves are specific to our hosting, but should be sufficient for an example.
notification_email: notifications@hs1.discoursemail.com
reply_by_email_address: incoming+%{reply_key}@hs1.discoursemail.com
A notification:
[image]
A replyable message:
[image]
Implementing this functionality should address enough of the challenges here to handle bounced email effectively. I still need to work out exactly how we will notify a multi-lingual user base effectively and get them back on track quickly when they’ve fixed email problems. That is, when they’ve made an effective change they need to notify us or the system so that the blocks on them can be lifted.