Sending an e-mail shouldn''t be this hard...!?

February 3, 2023 @ 10:02 pm πŸ”— Post Link

Buffalo Sabres, Winter, World of Warcraft, canada

postfix config

postfix config


So I have a basic little portfolio website with a form. I'm hosting the site myself on a Raspberry Pi with Apache2. Setting up the web server and getting HTTPS functional wasn't that difficult. I mean after hours of google searches and docs - it eventually did work.

I can't say the same for simply sending an email from a PHP form. OMG the rabbit hole I ventured down... Trying to use Postfix to send an simple form e-mail via my GMAIL account was borderline traumatic. Every single inch forward was blocked and I was knocked back two inches with some error or another security requirement. Like EVER. TIME. A username and password is no longer good enough for old google anymore. Hell no. Here are a thousand security requirements to jump through. I tried for hours, reading docs, googling errors, $ service postfix restart over and over. It was very frustrating and ridiculous. I'm really just sending form data TO MYSELF. I eventually gave up. I was just not making any real progress to get it functional. I pondering trying some other SMTP relay service other than google but meh, they want way too much info. Yes, I get blocking spam but I'm just trying to send and e-mail to myself. Should it really be this hard? So I remembered I tried TypeForm before but I hate its UI and that the input appears to force you to use one input per page - so stupid. So I googled Typeform alternatives and came across tally. Wow, a simple, fairly unobtrusive way to get form data e-mailed to yourself! God forbid! Thank you tally. So far anyway....

Wow, that third episode of The Last of Us...Well done.

We finished 1883 in under a week. That is usually a sign that it was very compelling. And wow, was it ever. It was easily one of the most engaging, well-written, well-acted, cinematic series I've ever watched. Emotional and powerful. Sure it is very, very grim but I don't think you could make a quality frontier series with rainbows and lollipops. I do wonder how the one-legged gypsy will fare... Anyway, I don't give out five stars but this is pretty damn close ⭐⭐⭐⭐¾.

UPDATE!

Ok... So I'm pretty stubborn when I want a solution to my tech issues! Google wasn't delivering my SMTP e-mail...but what about Microsoft/Outlook? And what about an established PHP E-mail system? What about PHPMailer? How about yes and yes? And success! Yes, PHPMailer with an Outlook account and my data is delivered from my home web server once again. I do like Tally and will remember it - just in case Microsoft also drops the authentication hammer... I'll hopefully update my form tonight. Phew................

UPDATE!

Finally. The stupid form is alive again.