Weather Display Email Setup and Sending problems

If you enable email sending from “Weather Display” and experience problems this is your first stop :slight_smile:

Obviously your first step is to decide whether you want to use your ISP (internet provider, telco, cable or satellite) or your web hosts mail server to send your Weather reports and warnings.

If you are using your ISP then the general default settings that come in “Weather Display” for SMTP (Outgoing) Port “25” should work fine however if you want to use your Web Host to send your “Weather Display” generated messages then you may experience problems.

There are two areas to set email sending capabilities, both accessible from your “Control Panel”
1: FTP & Connections - Weather Report Email"
2: Warning Alerts & Email - Main Setup

1: FTP & Connections - Weather Report Email"

Setting up email sending from “Weather Display” is very straight forward and you need to know the following information:

Email address(es) you want to send messages to:

  • Your Station Name - As you want it to appear in the email reports and warning alerts
  • Your email address - The address the messages will show as being sent from
  • Your SMTP (Outgoing mail server address) - This will be where you must decide between using your ISP provider or your Web Host mail server for sending messages.
  • Username and password - these will be the username and password for the email account you are using to send messages
    [li]Use Auth Login - Most providers will require this so it should be ticked
  • SMTP Port - Port 25 is the general Default Outgoing Port

If using both Weather Report emails and Weather Warning emails you want to ensure both screens are set the same, with the possible exception of the addresses the messages will be sent to.

2: Weather Warnings & Alerts - Main Setup"

Now that you have everything set you will want to test and ensure the messages are being sent properly.

If you receive the Test email (both setup screens have Test buttons) then you should be all set.

However if you test and no message is received then it is trouble shooting time.

First check your FTP Log and look for:
Sending Weather Report Email, auth
Connecting to mail server.

See if an error is reported such as “10053: [10053] Software caused connection abort” or if it reports success.

If success was indicated then check your spam and trash folders and make sure the test message wasn’t received but ended up being filtered.

Second double check your username, password and mail server settings and ensure they are correct and do_not have any leading or trailing spaces (which can happen if you copy and paste the information).

If you are sending your “Weather Display” messages using your Web Host provider it is possible that your ISP is blocking Port 25, which without going into a lot of detail is becoming fairly common.

Many web hosts listen for SMTP connections on an alternate port, the most common one being Port 587 so you can just go ahead and set your SMTP Port to 587 and test again.

If you still are not receiving the test messages you may want to try using your ISP provider email settings and see if they don’t work, remember to change back to port 25.

If you can send using your ISP provided email settings but not your web hosts then the problem is more then likely a result of Port 25 blocking and if Port 587 doesn’t work then you can contact your web host, let them know it appears your ISP is blocking Port 25 and do they allow SMTP Connections on an alternate Port and if so what Port Number.

Special Notes:

  • It has been reported that e-rice allows SMTP connections on Port 2525 for those using e-rice.
  • Gmail cannot be used at this time due to SSL Mail requirements not supported by “Weather Display”
  • Yahoo Free mail does not support SMTP, Yahoo Mail Plus appears to support SMTP over Port 587
  • Hotmail does not support SMTP
  • FutureQuest allows SMTP connections over port 587 and Port 1025

If you are interested in more information regarding Port Blocking please see this Article:
http://www.postcastserver.com/help/Port_25_Blocking.aspx

More information regarding Port 587 may be viewed here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838667,00.asp

Related Weather Watch Posts:
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/p/189512
http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/26752

If you are aware of a Web Host that allows SMTP over special Ports please PM Niko or JaxWeather with the information.