Installation guide, and answers to most of your mailing issues

[xavier]

Hi all,

CiviMail system configuration is a complex task which requires system administrator level skills. Correct configuration is crucial to have your system running, to keep it off spam lists and black lists.

A chapter in our book "Understanding CiviCRM" is available online About CiviMail Configuration and describes how to do that.

To have a working mail system, you need to configure a mailbox, set up a 2 cronjobs, possibly creating a DNS record and put the right information in the right screen in CiviCRM.

If you have an error message or your mails aren't sent, that's likely that one of these steps have been missed.

Please do spend the time to read it, it will save you a lot of pain in the long run, both by having quicker a running system, and avoid having you being blacklisted (really, I learnt the hard way, it's time consuming

The most common problems:

1) you haven't configured a mailbox, this mailbox doesn't support + notation (eg. if you are using MS exchange), you haven't properly added it in CiviCRM (you forgot the prefix)

2) You web server can't communicate properly with your mail server

3) Your cronjobs aren't properly configured, or the CMS user information you use for the cronjob isn't properly configured (it needs to have the permissions to access CiviCRM and to edit all contacts)

If you aren't sure these points are properly covered in your installation, and even if you don't think it's related at all with the error you have, please do be sure all that is configured, otherwise, you will have a problem at one point or another.

4) you aren't using the last version of CiviCRM, and your version contains a bug/issue that has been fixed already.

5) You are using a mail server that has some kind of limit on how many mails can be sent per hour. For instance using smtp.gmail.com is known not to work above a few dozen mails.



Good luck!