Setting WordPress With External SMTP Server
>> Friday, April 1, 2011
Setting WordPress With External SMTP Server
I really don’t like having sendmail running on a webserver, but some features of WordPress just don’t work if it can’t send email (user registration, for example). Still, WordPress offers support to send email through external SMTP servers instead if a local mailer.
In /wp-includes/pluggable.php
around line 377, change
$phpmailer->isMail();
to
$phpmailer->isSMTP();
Then, in /wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php
around line 155, set your SMTP host:
var $Host = "my.smtphost.com";
You may also need to set a username and password, and tell WP to attempt authentication. You’ll see those in the lines below the hostname variable.
var $SMTPAuth = true;
var $Username = "username";
var $Password = "password";
On the other hand, you could do this via a plugin, perhaps even Callum McDonald’s WP Mail SMTP.