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I've recently hosted my wordpress website through AWS Lightsail. The site has a contact form and a newsletter, but neither are working. I'm also unable to send a password reset email through wordpress, receiving a message that the host may have disabled the mail() function.

How do I setup email on my website? Is it handled through the domain or the host? I've read that I may need to sign up for AWS SES, however I'm unsure how to proceed. My client has also informed me that they have Outlook 365 setup for the domain, but I'm unsure where that fits in.

Apologies for the vagueness. I'm new to hosting websites online, and have been unable to find any useful tutorials/resources so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Supergogoman91
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  • Since you have Office 365 setup for your domain, Google the term "WordPress Office 365 Setup Email". You will find lots of links to setup WordPress email. I recommend using one of the add-ons (most are free) to setup mail on WordPress (PostMan is a good choice). You will then use your Office 365 credentials to send email from WordPress. – John Hanley Feb 03 '18 at 01:36
  • Can you use SES ? It's pretty straightforward and I use it in my blog. – Varun Chandak Feb 03 '18 at 16:41

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I would suggest not hosting your client's email through your Lightsail server. There are a lot of extra headaches to consider and there are other services that are more reliable and offer a better more robust user interface than the options available on server.

To get your client a custom domainname email address (ie joe@domainname.com) here are two options:

Zoho - Cost: FREE

You can sign up here: https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html?src=zmail You need to verify the domain name for this to work (either by adding an HTML file to the site or a CNAME to the domain)

GSuite by Google - Cost: $5/user/month

You can sign up here: https://inbox.google.com/u/0/search/google%20suite#m_-1052842142248281614_ You can also get some good promotional codes to get 20% off the first year - here's one: 9746YLRVNWERPAH

And, to your question about making sure forgot password emails are sent, make sure sendmail is installed on the server (apt-get install sendmail), that the /etc/hosts file contains the following

  • 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain yourhostnamehere

and that port 25 is open on the server.

codeymcgoo
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  • how do I install and check for files? Is it through the Bitnami terminal? Is that also where I'll find the ports? – Supergogoman91 Feb 02 '18 at 22:32
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    Yeah, you click on the SSH terminal icon in the Lightsail dashboard and then you navigate around using Linux commands to find and add files (navigate into different directories using "cd directory" and edit files using "nano filename"). You can edit the ports by clicking the 3 dot icon to the right of the terminal and then click on the networking tab. Then, it gives you an interface to add the port. – codeymcgoo Feb 02 '18 at 23:41
  • Also, port 25 is the default SMTP port, not 587 as I originally mentioned. – codeymcgoo Feb 03 '18 at 02:05
  • Configured Zoho mail in ~30 minutes for my domain. Thank you for providing this solution! – Nicolai Lissau Sep 04 '18 at 17:10