How to Send Email with WordPress from GoDaddy (Windows Hosting) « Wordpress « Mario J Vargas – Angstrey.com

How to Send Email with WordPress from GoDaddy (Windows Hosting)

UPDATE: Monday, July 20, 2009

Several visitors have contacted me to inform me that after applying my suggestions above, they were still receiving the error message with the red border. Please visit this follow-up post for information on how to possibly fix the problem. Please let me know if it worked for you!

Follow-Up Post: Contact Form 7’s “Failed to send your message” Error

UPDATE: August 27, 2009

If your website is being hosted on GoDaddy and you are using WordPress version 2.8.x (2.8.4 being the latest at time of writing) and the latest version of Contact Form 7 (2.0.1 at time of writing), you are probably visiting this blog because you are getting the annoying “failed to send your message” error (with the red border) in your contact form.

I just found out this evening that after upgrading to Contact Form 7 2.0.1 and WordPress 2.8.4, my contact form won’t send e-mails anymore. When I wrote this post back in April 2009, I was using WP version 2.7.1.

Well, I have good news: I have solved the problem. Please follow the instructions shown below for configuring WP-Mail-SMTP on your GoDaddy-hosted WordPress installation and then continue to the follow-up post above.

The Problem

My blog is being hosted at GoDaddy.com on their Windows hosting package and it’s running off of IIS 7. This service supports PHP 5, which allowed me to install WordPress. One requirement I had was the ability to have a contact form. I found Contact Form 7, which appears to be a popular WordPress plug-in. I installed and configured the plug-in, but I wasn’t able to send e-mail through it. I received the following error message:

Failed to send your message

I later found out at the Contact Form 7 developer’s blog that the problem was server-related as indicated by the red border. I googled the solution and found it. Rob Layton posted a very helpful article about how to solve this problem:

http://www.roblayton.net/archive/wordpress-not-sending-emails-anymore-solved/

In short, his solution points to the fact that PHP Mail or SMTP are no longer working after upgrading to a later version of WP. He suggests one of two plug-ins:

I opted for WP Mail.

I tried his recommendations which are detailed in his blog entry, but they didn’t work for me. Below is what I did for my GoDaddy account.

Solution

Create a new e-mail account using the GoDaddy mail control panel. If you already are using GoDaddy as your e-mail provider, you don’t need to create a new one.
Install either WP-Mail-SMTP or Cimy Swift SMTP. Since I am not using Cimy Swift SMTP, my instructions apply to WP-Mail-SMTP, but the solution should be fairly similar for Cimy. Then activate the plug-in.
In the WordPress administration console, click “Settings”.
Click the Email link under “Settings” (or the equivalent for Cimy). Enter the following data:
1. From Email: “yourusername@domain.com” (without the quotes). This must be your GoDaddy hosted e-mail account.
2. From Name: type in either your name or the name of your website. This will make the From line of the e-mail read as “From Name” <yourusername@domain.com>.
3. Mailer: Choose “Send all WordPress emails via SMTP”. Do not choose the “…PHP mail() function…” because it won’t work.
4. SMTP Host: relay-hosting.secureserver.net (do not use the SMTP server that GoDaddy provided you during your e-mail account sign-up. For the record, that is smtpout.secureserver.net).
5. SMTP Port: 25 (default for most SMTP servers).
6. Encryption: Choose “No encryption”. (I hope you aren’t sending sensitive data!)
7. Authentication: Choose “No: Do not use SMTP authentication”.
8. Click the Update Options button. You will be taken to the General Settings tab.
9. Now click the Email link again. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and type in a valid e-mail address in the To: box under the “Send a Test Email” section.
10. Click the Send Test button.
11. If you did everything correctly, you should see the following screen:

E-mail test successful

Continue to follow-up post (Contact Form 7’s “Failed to send your message” error)…

contact form 7, email, WordPress

This entry was posted on April 22, 2009, 11:18 PM and is filed under WordPress. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

#1 by John McKillip on December 11, 2009 - 11:27 AM

Thanks a ton, dude!

Quote

#2 by aaron on December 11, 2009 - 1:16 PM

thanks so much for your help

#3 by aaron on December 17, 2009 - 6:41 PM

i was using contact forms for a few days and it worked fine with your fix. i ran in to some problems after trying to publish another form on the site. on the first form i created it’s saying the msg was sent successfully and i receive nothing. and on the second form i created, i get the red bar server error again and don’t receive anything. any ideas?

#4 by Mario on December 18, 2009 - 8:53 PM

Aaron,

Feel free to send me a screen shot of your settings. Then I’ll be able to assist you. My e-mail address is angstrey [at] hot mail (one word) dot com.

#5 by Neo on December 21, 2009 - 7:55 PM

Worked. Nice work

#6 by Paul on December 22, 2009 - 9:00 PM

This really helped me. I tried three other tutorials and this one nailed it perfectly. Thanks!

#7 by Satish Patel on December 23, 2009 - 5:31 AM

As i have face email sending problem when i started the deluxe window hosting plan with go daddy.
In this problem the visitor’s email is gmail or yahoo or else then i am not able to receive the mail from my website(www.seikoflex.com).

To solve the above problem i work hard & solve that by putting dummy email of domain name.

the code below…….

Public Sub SendEmailMessage(ByVal strFrom As String, ByVal strTo _
As String, ByVal strSubject _
As String, ByVal strMessage _
As String, ByVal file As String)
‘This procedure overrides the first procedure and accepts a single
’string for the recipient and file attachement
Try
Dim MailMsg As New MailMessage(New MailAddress(“inquiry@vinayak-infotech.com”,strFrom.Trim()), New MailAddress(strTo))
MailMsg.BodyEncoding = Encoding.Default
MailMsg.Bcc.Add(“vinayakinfotech.surat@gmail.com”)
MailMsg.CC.Add(“seikoflex@gmail.com”)
MailMsg.Subject = strSubject.Trim()
MailMsg.Body = strMessage.Trim() & vbCrLf
MailMsg.Priority = MailPriority.High
MailMsg.IsBodyHtml = True

If Not file = “” Then
Dim MsgAttach As New Attachment(file)
MailMsg.Attachments.Add(MsgAttach)
End If

‘Smtpclient to send the mail message
Dim SmtpMail As New SmtpClient
SmtpMail.Host = “relay-hosting.secureserver.net” ”
SmtpMail.Send(MailMsg)
‘MessageBox (“Test”)
Catch ex As Exception
‘Message Error
End Try
End Sub
—————————–

Using this code i can receive mail from any other gmail or yahoo user to my email (gmail account).

As per my Client’s complain that you cannot view our business mail and remove your email address(inquiry@vinayak-infotech.com) .

but if i remove my domain name’s dummy email(inquiry@vinayak-infotech.com) then it is not working , so i can’t receive mail from any yahoo user to my gmail account.

Please ….Please Solve the Problem & send me the replay.

Other wise As per my client complain i have to switch other hosting company.

I hope my problem will sort soon & i want to continue with go daddy.

Satish Patel

#8 by Mario on December 23, 2009 - 8:10 AM

Satish, your solution is written in VB.Net. Are you using WordPress?

#9 by Dave on December 30, 2009 - 2:56 PM

Thank you!! Your solution worked perfectly for my website! Your time and effort has saved me from hours of frustration.

#10 by Ryan Marganti on January 7, 2010 - 2:44 AM

Thanks a lot. Helped on a project that didn’t have the budget to waste time.