It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an entry to my blog. Ever since I posted my popular article on How to Send E-mail with WordPress from GoDaddy, I’ve received numerous thank-you notes and countless other visits from people all over who have had the same problem I did when I decided to have my website hosted by GoDaddy almost a year ago.

Last week I was contacted by two people who had the same problem as me and many others, but their situation was rather different. Their names are Sean and Heather. Both of their websites are hosted on Yahoo! Small Business. I thought that my solution would also work for them, so when they contacted me, I went about my routine to ask for screen shots of their settings and provide other suggestions. Both tried with no success. They were kind enough to be patient with me as I tried to help them with the situation. They also tried on their own and I followed up with them. Sean went much further and gave me his website’s username and password to see if I could do something about it.

I sat at my kitchen table while my wife was preparing dinner and I started to tackle the problem. I was ready to give up and was getting somewhat frustrated. The problem turned out much more difficult than I thought, but you’ll be amazed at how simple it is anyway. I scoured the Internet looking for possible solutions. I found two very useful articles that hinted at the solution:

• Send email using Phpmailer with Yahoo/GMail
• Yahoo Small Business Help: Getting Started with POP/SMTP

I heuristically tried different settings by using my previous experience with the WP-Mail-SMTP plugin and my GoDaddy settings. Below are the results of my research and efforts.

1. First if you haven’t done so already, download the awesome WP-Mail-SMTP plugin and install it on your WordPress blog.
2. In the WordPress control panel, click Settings, then select Email. This will open the WP-Mail-SMTP plugin’s settings.
3. Enter/choose the following:
   • From Email: (the primary e-mail associated with your Yahoo! Small Business website. For example, if your website is mycoolwebsite.com and your Yahoo! Small Business account is username@mycoolwebsite.com, you should enter username@mycoolwebsite.com)
   • From Name: (Type in anything you would like. For example: MyWebsite.com)
   • Mailer: Choose “Use the PHP mail() function to send emails”
   • SMTP Host: smtp.bizmail.yahoo.com
   • SMTP Port: 465
   • Encryption: Choose “Use SSL encryption”
   • Authentication: Choose “Yes: use SMTP authentication”
   • Username: (same e-mail as in From Email above. Make sure it consists of the format username@domain. For example, username@mycoolwebsite.com)
   • Password: (the above e-mail’s password).
4. Click on Update Options.
5. You should be back at the WP-Mail-SMTP settings. Let’s get ready to send a test.
6. Optionally enter an e-mail address in the To: field below the “Send a test email” section.
7. Click Send Test.

If you did everything correctly, you should see the following screen:

If you are using the Contact Form 7 plugin, make sure that the To: and From: fields have the same address that you entered in WP-Mail-SMTP. I am thinking that you could put any e-mail address in the To: field, however, but I haven’t confirmed this. Then follow the steps shown in my blog article here.  (Ignore the lines that have been crossed out).

Once again, I would like to thank Sean and  Heather for trusting me and working with me in solving this problem. I hope that others will benefit from this as much as I and they have.