I am in the process of switching my site from another provider to Winhost. All of my domains are kept with a 3rd party company -- separate from any webhost that I use. I use Gmail Apps for my domain for email. Thus my domain names and emails are not tied to any webhost that I'm using. I have most of my site transferred already and working properly. However, none of my email forms work. They are not complicated forms. Basic HTML forms - that occasionally need to allow for an attachment. I use either php: " mail($recipient, $subject, $message, $headers); " etc, or an ASP mailer that uses CDO configuration and localhost for the smtp server. Here's what I *think* the problem is: My site is still hosted and functioning on my soon-to-be previous provider. This is a business website so I'm making the transition as seemless as possible. I have yet to point any of my domains to Winhost - and have been testing everything with the secondary URL. Winhost is set up as if my domain name is already pointed to the server, even creating a [email protected] account which obviously doesn't work yet. I can't point the domains until I know the code is going to be functional. I can't make the switch to Winhost for real until I know the code is functional. So I'm wondering how to test my code and get these email forms working without pointing my domain names. I can't make the switch until I know that everything works, and I can't afford for the site to be down while I try to figure out all of the code. Any ideas for me?
With the php form, it actually acts as if it worked - you are even redirected to the proper "Your mail has been sent!" page. But the email never actually arrives - have tried to send to several accounts and made sure to look in spam folders, etc. With the asp forms, I get "The transport failed to connect to the server." Smtp server has been localhost - although I've tried switching that, and thats where I think its getting confused because my domain isn't pointed yet. But I'm not sure.
'localhost' means you are trying to use the web servers smtp service to send out email. The smtp service on Winhost web servers are disabled. The smtp server you should use is the same SMTP server your Outlook is pointing to. You stated that you are using Gmails mail server, you should contact them and verify what their smtp is. You should also check what are the creterias they need to send email through their smtp server. On our SMTP server we require SMTP authentication. That means you need to log into our SMTP server first before it will send out the email. I'm not sure what Gmail will require to send email through there SMTP server.
Is the problem then with just using your SMTP server that it wants to use "mail.mydomain.com" - which like I said is not pointed to Winhost yet? And if I've changed all my MX records and CName over to Google, does that mean my only option would be to find out what they require to send email like you said (which may be something they don't allow)? I would like to use your SMTP server for sending these forms out, but maintain GMail for all of my actual email. Is that possible?
It will be better if you tell me what is the domain name you have with Winhost. This way I can pull up your records. A lot of the suggestions I can give you will base off on what name servers your domain name is setup to.
