Domain Settings > Mail Settings

[Ron Frigon]

We host all of our email locally on our own servers. Currently we have our Mail Settings in Miva set to localhost and mail services on the server turned off. This has been working fine.

We would like to change the mail settings to use our local mail server due to spam issues but we seem to have a configuration issue or something... The Mail Method field is causing us some issues... We receive the following error when sending a test Merchant Email via the admin:

One or more notification emails could not be sent at this time.
Commerce method 'SMTP' is unsupported or not configured.

We've also tried MvSMTP, toggled angle brackets etc... Can't seem to find anything about these settings in any of the Docs.

Our mail server is running Exchange 2007 and is behind a Sonicwall NSA3500 using the Sonicwall Comprehensive Anti Spam Service (CASS).

Any Advice?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Domain Settings > Mail Settings

The mail method should be blank; it will use smtp but you don't need to tell it that. I believe that box is there for possible add-on functionality should it ever be needed.

Should just need to set the server, port and authentication information to let it relay through your server.

Also, you should adjust your SPF record, assuming this is regarding giggletimetoys.com. Currently it's:

"v=spf1 -all"

That basically says email from the domain name giggletimetoys.com is not permitted to come from any server. The -all makes it explicit, but there are no servers listed as valid sources of email for that domain. You are likely having a good portion of emails end up in spam folders.

[Ron Frigon]

Re: Domain Settings > Mail Settings

Hi David, Thank you for the reply.

We actually don't even use giggletimetoys.com for email. We use jrousek.com with the SPF record:

v=spf1 a mx/24 ip4:63.134.207.1/24 ip4:216.119.112.151 ?all

Does this look like a correct setting with ?all at the end? Or should that be removed?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Domain Settings > Mail Settings

?all actually means to interpret the record as neutral, or as if the SPF record doesn't exist, so with ?all there, you won't see any difference than if you had no SPF record.

The preferable option would be to ensure the SPF is accurate, then change it to -all, but that can be dangerous if you're not 100% sure it's correct. -all means explicit, so it ensures unauthorized mail servers can't send mail as if they were your domain, but if it's wrong, your legit email could bounce.

~all would be the other one to use, which is a 'recommended' list but not explicit, so it helps with deliverability of email that comes from a server that is in the list, helping ensure it isn't treated as spam, and should have no effect on legit email coming from a server that was accidentally left off the list.

If the server generating the emails for your store is in the list, as well as any other mail servers your messages come from, then ~all or -all should be safe to use.