We will have to send emails to the customers of our store. So, we need to configure our mail server. For that purpose, we need to set an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server.
1. Getting started
To set our SMTP information, we will create an email account for our store with Gmail.
2. How to do it
We will go to http://gmail.com. Then, we will create an email account with them.
We will fill up the form with the necessary information. And then click on the Create my account button.
Now, we will enter our newly created Gmail account and do some adjustments to our settings. Click Settings on the top-right corner.
Then, we will select Forwarding and Pop/Imap, and we will enable POP and IMAP settings.
After doing our changes, we will save it by clicking the Save button.
3. There’s more…
We have created our account with Gmail. Now, we will set our mail options for our shop with the SMTP options that we just created.
3.1. Setting mail options
To set mail options, we need to log in as admin with our store. Enter the admin username and password.
We will go to System | Settings, and then, we will click on the Mail tab. It will open up the following window:
Now, let’s discuss the fields in it;
- Mail Protocol: We will choose the Smtp option from the drop-down box. The other available option is Mail.
- SMTP Host: This will be our SMTP host address. As we are using Gmail as smtp server, our host address will be ssl://smtp.googlemail.com.
- SMTP Username: This will be our Gmail username, for example, we set it as shops@gmail.com.
- SMTP Password: This is the Gmail password for our account.
- SMTP Port: We will set the SMTP port for the Gmail server. This will be 465.
- SMTP Timeout: We will leave it as it is.
- Alert Mail: Setting this option to yes will send us email when a new order has been processed.
After setting the fields, we will save it by clicking the Save button. And, we are done with the mail options.
Source: Hasan Tahsin (2011), OpenCart 1.4 Template Design Cookbook, Packt Publishing.