Multiple addresses

Awesome, that information is very useful. If I may ask something else:

In your article, you say:

“Tip: Always set the Reply-To header of your Contact Form to be your visitor’s email address, so that you will be able to reply to your visitor regardless of what shows up as the From address:”

Which basically says “always set reply-to header”. But this seems to contradict what you say elsewhere (from previously in this forum thread):

“Since your Reply-To header is the same as the from header, there is no need to set it.”

Is it safe to say that it’s always a good idea to set the Reply-To header?

Awesome man, that is a goldmine of useful information.

I’m now looking into WP’s bundled PHPMailer and may be using that instead of PHP mail(). That said, would you happen to have a recommended magic header recipe for sending email alerts with PHPMailer?

I want to get it right this time 🙂

So yeah that makes sense, because wp_mail() is using PHPMailer, correct?

Also, would the following headers work well with wp_mail():

X-Mailer = USP
From = $name <$from>
Reply-To = $name <$from>
Content-Type = text/plain, charset..

..where:

$name = get_bloginfo(‘name’)
$from = get_bloginfo(‘admin_email’)

Would that be optimal, or can you suggest any improvements? (note this isn’t the actual code, just pseudo-code for brevity)

Jason, you have been an enormous help with this, not only for USP but for all of my plugins that involve sending of mail. Glad to hear that my proposed header configuration looks good.

The only question I have left is about using get_bloginfo('admin_email') for the From address. As you know, the WP administrator can specify *any* email address for that setting, so would there be a problem if the email is not from the same domain?

From my understanding thus far, the From header must match the domain, so what happens if the address specified in get_bloginfo('admin_email') is for some non-domain/other email address (like hotmail, gmail, or other-domain.com)?

Had to meditate on that for awhile 🙂

Okay, I understand now that the email must have originated from the SMTP server denoted in the SPF record of the From email’s domain, as you illustrate with the examples provided in your previous comment.

Now, with that in mind, back to figuring out the best possible solution and/or advice for sending email via USP (and similar plugins). Is it safe to say that, in general, most domains authorize addresses from the same domain to send email? Such that anydomain.tld in general would likely be configured to authorize sending of email from anyuser@anydomain.tld?

This is just based on my experience with web hosts and domain setups; I’ve never had to mess with the SPF/MX records or anything similar: domain-based email usually just works without further configuration.

I ask this because I get the occasional user who asks why their email is not received at whatever email service. It would be nice to be able to advise them to try sending from an email address that is of the same domain as their site, as a way of helping them to troubleshoot whether or not the SPF record (From header) is the issue.

Way out of my depth here, thanks for bearing with me.

I made a mistake in my question, instead of asking this:

“Is it safe to say that, in general, most domains authorize addresses from the same domain to send email?”

I meant to ask this:

“Is it safe to say that, in general, most web hosts set up their servers to authorize addresses from the same domain to send email?”

Again, this is based on 15 years of experience working online, never ever have had to set up any SPF/MX records for email ever. For any account across dozens of servers/hosts.

It seems that they (or something) configures the servers in such a way as to ensure that domain-based email is sent correctly.

Is this not the case?

Please excuse my ignorance in such matters, just not an email “pro”. Thanks.

“this is the state of email now”

As of when? I just opened a new account last month at a popular web host, and domain-based email can be sent with no problems whatsoever. I merely had to pick a username and password, and then BAM the email whatever@domain.tld just works. No messing with any type of records or anything ever. It was all set up automatically.

So from my perspective, if someone has a WordPress site hosted on a domain, say, whatever.tld, using an email from that same domain, say, whoever@whatever.tld, is a good starting point for troubleshooting email. As stated, this is because most web hosts configure all of the proper/required records automatically, so the From header is most likely to be correct (unless the web host is doing something incorrectly).

To further the point, contrast the above scenario with that of the user who specifies, say, a hotmail or gmail address. In this case, then yes, most likely the server is not auto-configured to send email from hotmail/gmail, so the From headers will be incorrect as you have suggested.

I hope this makes sense, but again I’m not an email expert — just trying to determine the best possible strategy for troubleshooting, etc.

Yeah that doesn’t make any sense to me, most likely because I am missing a lot of essential information on the whole “email” topic.

Is there a book or something you can recommend that explains in detail the process of sending/receiving email (from a technical perspective)? Thanks in advance for any recommendations, would be great to learn how this works from a straightforward and authoritative source.