Tag: smtp

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New Magento SMTP features: Email logging and email sending events

I had a longer than usual train ride on Friday, thanks to missing my usual one by about 20 seconds! The good news is, during the extended train ride I have added some new functionality to my SMTP Pro magento extension – it now optionally logs all emails to a database table and you can view the detail of them from within the Magento admin interface. I still can’t upload it to Magento connect however, so please download the release from here and let me know how it goes. Update: Fixed bug pointed out by Luis below – new release is 1.1.1.

I have also added a nice little event firing mechanism – I’m inviting fellow developers to suggest events they want fired, to make manipulating outbound emails easier for other extension developers. Currently the only one is smtppro_email_after_send but there is scope for adding many more – contact me!

I’ll add some notes about the new functionality below, but just to recap using my free smtp extension for Magento you can now:

  • Configure Magento for sending email with any SMTP server
  • Easily configure Magento to send email with GMail or Google Apps Email
  • Diagnose connection problems using the email self test
  • Send using a number of different gmail/google addresses if your email volumes are very high
  • Enable a development mode and an email suppression mode
  • View a log of all email sent from within Magento, the date they were sent and search and filter the list of emails
  • Hook into a growing number of email related events to extend the email capability of Magento

All for free too, I think it compares favorably with the commercial extensions that offer the same functionality. I’d appreciate any opinions on that, as I’m aiming to have the best email extension for Magento. Anyway here’s some info about the new features, in case you care.
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Pre-release: SMTP Pro / Magento Gmail & Google Apps Email Beta testing (win a prize)

In a bid to help solve a weird 404 error that Kevin has been experiencing with the self test I offered him a pre-release copy of my upcoming ‘unified’ Magento email extension. It will support both SMTP and Google Apps/Gmail along with a few new features.

Anyway, if anyone is keen to try the extension please contact me or flick me an email or post a comment and let me know, I’ll send through the files, I’d rather not post it for public availability here yet, because it’s not as stable as I’d like. But expect it very soon!
Continue reading Pre-release: SMTP Pro / Magento Gmail & Google Apps Email Beta testing (win a prize)

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Sneak Peek at the New Magento Gmail/Google Apps and SMTP extension

Wow a month since my last blog post, I’ll have to stop calling this a blog and make it a magazine if these blog posts don’t get more frequent huh?! Anyway, I do have something interesting to report from the world of Magento email extensions, particularly my Google Apps/Gmail extension and my SMTP Pro extension are in for a bit of a shake up.
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Google Apps Email/Gmail Magento Extension v0.5 released

It’s been a while since I have written any updates on my Gmail and Google Apps email extension for Magento. I have just released version 0.5 and thought now would be a good opportunity to write a quick update on the changes and what I have planned for SMTP email support in Magento.

Version 0.5 of Google Apps Email/Gmail Magento Extension

Firstly the changes in the latest release of the Google Apps/Gmail Magento extension. Both have been inspired by user feedback so two ‘thank you’s to follow. Firstly thanks to Blue Acorn for pointing out the lack of multi-store capability on the self test. It’s actually a little clunky getting the store parameters in the admin of Magento, my custom button needed to add the parameter like so:

$buttonBlock = $this->getElement()->getForm()->getParent()->getLayout()->createBlock('adminhtml/widget_button');
 
$params = array(
    'website' => $buttonBlock->getRequest()->getParam('website')
);
 
$url = Mage::helper('adminhtml')->getUrl("googleappsmailtest", $params);

And then the controller needed to actually pick up which Magento store to get the config for:

$websiteModel = Mage::app()->getWebsite($this->getRequest()->getParam('website'));
 
$to = Mage::getStoreConfig('contacts/email/recipient_email', $websiteModel->getId());

The other change was a bit of a curve ball. I had a Magento + Gmail user named Matt contacted me with what seemed to be an unrelated issue. I have been poking around in the installation code trying to figure out what has been happening. It wasn’t until I did a full fresh install on Magento 1.3.2.3 that I noticed what was going on. My extension has a dependency on Mage_Core (obviously, right?) and the wiki guide on how to package Magento extensions says to include this dependency. However if you do then the downloader will download the Core files and a whole bunch of other required files. This is no problem if you have been a good boy or girl and made your changes to the themes outside of the default files, but if you have changed the default templates then there is a risk of your changes being lost!

So, the change is to remove this dependency, even though the guide says it should be there. It’s kind of obvious that you need Magento in order to run my extension anyway!

Magento SMTP support

The other update I wanted to post was that I am working on porting my Magento Gmail / Google Apps extension to also support full SMTP capability. I will be releasing the changes as a new extension, as it is important to me that the original goal of this extension (extreme simplicity and ease of use) is not lost under the weight of full SMTP configuration.

I know that there is already an older SMTP extension for Magento. I think I can improve upon it in several ways, I have developed Magento SMTP self test capability, and I have support for Magento newsletter sending. The current SMTP extension hasn’t been updated for nearly a year, and I have an opportunity to create a more modern, user friendly extension.

I’ll be working on it over the next few days and would invite feedback from anyone with ideas on ways to improve the Magento SMTP functionality.