com_connect - form and contact mailer

gaekwad · 2024-01-17 12:39:45

phiw13 wrote #336397:

Is it possible that PHP 8.3.0 is to blame ?

colak mentioned PHP 8.0.30, which is the most recent cut from the PHP 8.0 branch – and likely the last since it is now our of security support.

Bloke · 2024-01-17 17:13:55

colak wrote #336389:

DreamHost only allows 100 Recipients/hour for SMTP mail.

I may have read that wrong but isn’t that if you use their server for SMTP sending?

I was talking about bypassing DreamHost entirely and authenticating directly to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as an SMTP relay point.

Of course, you then may still hit Gmail’s sending limits (whatever they are).

Pete, do you have anything to add to this, given your experience with servers and mail services?

colak · 2024-01-17 17:51:10

Just to let you know that a solution may be at hand, thanks to Stef. I hope that, if it gets solved, he’ll share the basics of what we need to look out for. For now, it is believed that it has to do with DMARC.

phiw13 · 2024-01-18 07:05:28

gaekwad wrote #336398:

colak mentioned PHP 8.0.30, […]

sorry – completely misread the version number :-(

gaekwad · 2024-01-18 13:31:48

Bloke wrote #336400:

Pete, do you have anything to add to this, given your experience with servers and mail services?

Be careful of using free, third-party email services for bulk SMTP. Use a service like Sendgrid or Amazon SES that’s designed for the task. If you want to self host, have a look at Sendy. Those free services are OK for transactional stuff like a contact form, but steer clear of bulk sending.

Google and Yahoo go through waves of raising the bar for sending bulk email from external domains, there’s a whole mess of SPF, DKIM, DMARC and other DNS requirements that are set as hurdles. Paid accounts are usually a bit more permissive, but the ToS for most cloud-based email don’t allow bulk mailing. The most recent changes (2023Q4 to date) are causing some aggro as the barrier to entry is going up and up.

If you’re a non-profit, you may find some email marketing services offer reduced rates – but really, don’t screw around with a free email provider or you risk getting canned.

Sending email is trivial, it’s the receiving part and not getting into trouble doing it that takes the time & energy.

Bloke · 2024-01-18 13:40:36

Good advice, thank you. Figures that “free” providers limit things. I’m all for dedicated sending services. They offer good features. But the charges as things scale get eye watering very quickly.

Pat64 · 2024-01-19 10:45:09

A personal thanks to Stef.
Your plugin com_connect solves a recent problem with Gmail (no messages received sent from North America…). The from attribute offers me to set another address to correct this bad behavior.
Thank you lot.

gaekwad · 2024-01-19 11:38:33

Two things that appeared on my radar today:

Beginning September 30, 2024: third-party apps that use only a password to access Google Accounts and Google Sync will no longer be supported

Forward Email

Bloke · 2024-01-19 12:07:10

Interesting finds. That Forward Email service looks grand till you dig into the terms. For SMTP, they’re rate limited to 300 a day and they state:

You are only permitted to use our outbound SMTP service for transactional emails. You are prohibited from sending marketing email (e.g. promotional, bulk, or commercial email to a list of contacts with the same content). This includes examples such as a newsletter or a bulk announcement email.

So, no good for Yiannis in this instance.

I’ve been looking at Sendy. Seems to be a self-hosted drop-in for MailJet, MailChimp, MailerLite, etc. Which is fine if you’re creating campaigns and brand marketing in their dashboard. It has an API for subscription management and the ability to send that way too.

For Yiannis, he’s using Ben Bruce’s Postmaster at present to mail out Txp articles about events to 3k+ subscribers. That keeps all subscription handling and emailing in-house via com_connect, uses its own tables for list management, etc. and mail() to throw the content to subscribers.

Switching to 4.9.0 and using SMTP still means he’s rate limited by his host or any other host that allows SMTP.

One option is to export the subscriber list to Sendy and wire up com_connect to send (un)subscribe requests in that direction. Then just use the Sendy dashboard to create emails to pimp the URL to Txp articles about each event. I think that’ll work okay.

However, Sendy relies on AWS for its back end message sending. And claims that AWS costs just a dollar per 10K messages (I thought it was more expensive than this but their pricing page is gobbledegook).

So if the Sendy dashboard isn’t of interest, is it possible to hook up Txp to use AWS directly? So he can continue to pimp articles via Postmaster and just offload message delivery to Amazon SES?

In the AWS dashboard, the usual API key pair (public/secret) can be created, but I’m not sure if they can be plugged directly into the user/pass fields of our SMTP implementation in 4.9.0. Do we need to go through some intermediate step to get a transaction token, à la OAuth 2.0?

Just exploring options here. Anyone have any experience with Amazon in this regard?

gaekwad · 2024-01-19 17:16:44

Bloke wrote #336419:

So, no good for Yiannis in this instance.

Alas, no.

Sendy (or similar) with Amazon SES is by far the cheapest way to send bulk email.

Sendgrid is pretty good and has a non-profit tier. Mailgun is also good, a support ticket should be able to get you onto the flex plan.

Postmark is something I’ve used in the past with medium-sized campaigns, and that’s good value for money.

From memory, there’re intro credits available to NGOs at Techsoup, too.

is it possible to hook up Txp to use AWS directly?

I’d really like to explore how viable it would be for Textpattern to talk with AWS-compliant services in a future iteration. Stuff like using S3 for file & image storage. There’s more support burden with sending email, since it’s riskier than storing & retrieving files, but I’m sure it’s possible in your capable hands, Stef.

Bloke · 2024-01-19 17:36:26

Heh. Seems at least SMTP integration is a piece of cake in 4.9.0.

Offloading file and image storage to S3 would be high on my investigative list in a near future Txp version. It would slot nicely into the image panel changes.

frickinmuck · 2024-03-07 19:09:16

I have a site that’s getting a lot of spam messages through a com_connect form. Is there any way to add a captcha or something? Or maybe a spam setting I’m missing?

PHP version: 8.1.27
com_connect version: 4.7.1
Textpattern version: 4.8.7

Last edited by frickinmuck (2024-03-07 19:34:59)

jakob · 2024-03-07 20:03:38

There are several options:

pap_comconnect, which adds a honeypot field to trap unsuspecting bots. It’s not bad but not infallible.
ext_com_connect_verify for adding email address patterns to block. Yiannis has a list of spam patterns. This is, in my opinion, more effective but needs more hands-on maintenance to add relevant blacklisted terms/email addresses. See also this post. It can be also be modified to block word patterns in the email body instead (see below).*
and there’s a full-blown ext_captcha that adds hCaptcha / ReCaptcha spam prevention. See also this post.

*If you prefer to block word patterns rather than emails, you need to edit the plugin code as follows:

1. Change the $emailField line to read:

$messageField = trim(ps('com_connect_message'));

2. and further down in the last if (…) { block, change $emailField to read $messageField:

if ($pat && preg_match($pat, $messageField)) {

and

Bloke · 2024-03-07 20:26:45

Although it’s of no use right now unless you upgrade to 4.9.0-dev, built-in anti spam tools are already available.

frickinmuck · 2024-03-07 20:42:47

Thanks so much, both of you, this is all very helpful.

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Textpattern CMS support forum

#436 2024-01-17 12:39:45

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

phiw13 wrote #336397:

#437 2024-01-17 17:13:55

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

colak wrote #336389:

#438 2024-01-17 17:51:10

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#439 2024-01-18 07:05:28

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

gaekwad wrote #336398:

#440 2024-01-18 13:31:48

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

Bloke wrote #336400:

#441 2024-01-18 13:40:36

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#442 2024-01-19 10:45:09

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#443 2024-01-19 11:38:33

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#444 2024-01-19 12:07:10

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#445 2024-01-19 17:16:44

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

Bloke wrote #336419:

#446 2024-01-19 17:36:26

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#447 2024-03-07 19:09:16

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#448 2024-03-07 20:03:38

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#449 2024-03-07 20:26:45

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

#450 2024-03-07 20:42:47

Re: com_connect - form and contact mailer

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