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I am running Discourse and sending verification email, but the emails have my gmail address as sender and they go to spam folder and Google throws a warning that this may be phishing.

Do I need to buy an email through GoDaddy and send through that account? I am sorry, if this is not clear, I am confused about how emails works. Is this related to SPF?

EDIT

I was advised to "...use a domain that you are authorized for, and then create a SPF record with the IP of your forum in that domain." Can you explain what this means?

Zeynel
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validation system designed to prevent email spam by detecting email spoofing, a common vulnerability, by verifying sender IP addresses. SPF allows administrators to specify which hosts are allowed to send mail from a given domain by creating a specific SPF record (or TXT record) in the Domain Name System (DNS). Mail exchangers use the DNS to check that mail from a given domain is being sent by a host sanctioned by that domain's administrators.

I'm glad you found Zoho easy to set up. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's any way for it to be integrated into Discourse. However, there is another free service called Mandrill (https://mandrill.com) that you can use (and is in fact, officially endorsed by Discourse). You can find their tutorial on setting it up to work with Discourse at https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-email.md. Sorry to be redirecting you all over the place.

You'll also need to set up a Postfix server on your website host (I assume you have root/SSH access). Guide to configuring Postfix for use with Mandrill: http://help.mandrill.com/entries/23060367-Can-I-configure-Postfix-to-send-through-Mandrill-

Caleb Xu
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  • This was great! Thanks. I used Zoho and it was easy to setup, they had good instructions. Now can you give me a clue about how I can make Discourse send emails from nomilkfor.me using Zoho? – Zeynel Jan 11 '14 at 22:50
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    See my edited answer. – Caleb Xu Jan 11 '14 at 23:46
  • Actually, I couldn't make Mandrill and Postfix work, that's why I moved to hosting in order not to use Mandrill. So I guess there is no hope for me to use Discourse. The changes that I made actually broke the email and test email was working and now it is not working. And Zoho says MX Records are not pointing to Zoho even though they are. So I don't know.... – Zeynel Jan 12 '14 at 01:14
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    My Zoho MX's are pointed towards mx.zohomail.com and mx2.zohomail.com, respectively. Sorry about Discourse, though, I don't think it'll work with Zoho. – Caleb Xu Jan 12 '14 at 01:34
  • Now the test email worked. May I ask you a favor? Do you think you can create an account to see if you receive the verification email? That would be a huge help for me. The forum is at nomilkfor.me. I really appreciate it if you can. – Zeynel Jan 12 '14 at 01:56
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    Been about 10 minutes, no email, not even in the Spam folder. – Caleb Xu Jan 12 '14 at 02:25
  • Thanks, for trying. I am not having much luck with this. – Zeynel Jan 12 '14 at 02:27
  • Strange. You received no email but Discourse created you as user anyway. It will take some time to make this work properly. Thanks again for your help. – Zeynel Jan 12 '14 at 13:23