Question about configuring email on shared hosting

Installation
1

I just setup Discourse using the guide on the GitHub repo for setting up on Digital Ocean, and it seems that everything is working well after having some trouble with the email config and not knowing that I had to rebuild the container to get email working.

I looked around and didn’t see these questions answered specifically, so my apologies if this is a duplicate:

  1. I configured the email using my shared hosting provider and it seems to work fine. However, the email as configured also automatically includes a mailbox. Does Discourse need to have POP3 access or is SMTP by itself fine? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here or what makes sense. What does Discourse need?

  2. If I’m using my shared hosting SMTP, do I still need to mess around with SPF or DKIM? I don’t know and the only articles I found have to do with Mandrill which I’m not using.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Send a test email via admin, email to http://www.mail-tester.com via the address there. Look at the results closely and also read the copy of the Mail test closely too.

3

Thanks, I tried that and the score is not bad. For anyone else wondering where to find this, it’s at /admin/email.

I’m still unsure about this: Does Discourse also need POP3 access for some features or is SMTP by itself fine? Can I reuse the same email account for both?

4

If you want your users to reply to the posts via mail, then you would need POP3 access as well. Otherwise SMTP is just fine.

And yes, I guess you can use same email id for both purposes.

5

Thank you, that helps out!

6

No you absolutely cannot use the same email for both. This can lead to nasty endless email cycles and we explicitly block this because it has been a problem.

7

I see, thanks for clarifying!