In a discussion titled “Reply Mailinglist” under the Installation category and tagged with email, Taste-OF-IT reports an issue with email replies to Discourse topics, receiving a bad_destination_address error. Although emails are sent and received correctly for new topics, replies from external services like GMX fail because the generated reply address (e.g., replies+%{reply_key}@mydomain.tld) doesn’t exist. pfaffman suggests configuring direct-delivery incoming email for self-hosted sites. Taste-OF-IT clarifies they use a two-stage setup with nginx and asks about handling POP3 with their existing mail server. thoka asks whether their mail server supports sub-addressing, which Taste-OF-IT confirms works (e.g., bob+forum@mydomain.tld). thoka explains that any reply address (like replies+something@mydomain.tld) must be routed to the mailbox Discourse polls for incoming messages — essentially, the system must accept and forward sub-addressed emails to the correct inbox. The core issue is ensuring the dynamically generated reply addresses are handled by the mail server and delivered to Discourse’s polling inbox.
Hi,
i try using mailing list and mail reply. I have a selfhosted Discourse container. All work well. Emails are received and send. Mails from new Topics are send and received. But if i answer to an email and topic i got:
** bad_destination_address: none of the email addresses in the To, Cc and Bcc fields matched a configured incoming email address.*
I tested with different mailsystems. If i use the same host, thunderbird or roundcube shows me the correct recipient address from the forum. But if i reply from gmx it shows me replies+123yxc234. Thats seems to be configured in discourse: replies+%{reply_key}@mydomain.tld. But this mailaddress didnt exists. How can i handle this?
thx
Hi Jay,
and thanks for your reply. I have a 2 stage server. One container for prod system and one for testing. I have nginx in front of both. I am not sure how to control the new mailing container for each instance. What would the way via pop3 and my normal mailserver?
Hi Thomas,
yes Sub-Addressing is possible. I tested it with bob+forum@mydomain.tld and the mail is received.
Whats next? Do i have to change the configurationt to something like bob+%{reply_key}@mydomain.tld?
thx
Whatever you configure as your reply address, it has to reach the mailbox your server is polling for incoming messages.
replies+something@mydomain.tld should all be forwarded to this address.