How to set up gmail SMTP in WordPress

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I’m trying to set up an SMTP gmail server to send emails from my WordPress site. This is what I’ve got in my wp-config.php: 

define( 'SMTP_USER',   '[email protected]' );    // Username to use for SMTP authentication
define( 'SMTP_PASS',   'password' );       // Password to use for SMTP authentication
define( 'SMTP_HOST',   'smtp.gmail.com' );    // The hostname of the mail server
define( 'SMTP_FROM',   '[email protected]' ); // SMTP From email address
define( 'SMTP_NAME',   'My Site Name' );    // SMTP From name
define( 'SMTP_PORT',   '465' );                  // SMTP port number - likely to be 25, 465 or 587
define( 'SMTP_SECURE', 'tls' );                 // Encryption system to use - ssl or tls
define( 'SMTP_AUTH',    true );                 // Use SMTP authentication (true|false)
define( 'SMTP_DEBUG',   1 );                    // for debugging purposes only set to 1 or 2

I put this in my theme’s functions.php file:

add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'send_smtp_email' );
function send_smtp_email( $phpmailer ) {
    $phpmailer->isSMTP();
    $phpmailer->Host       = SMTP_HOST;
    $phpmailer->SMTPAuth   = SMTP_AUTH;
    $phpmailer->Port       = SMTP_PORT;
    $phpmailer->Username   = SMTP_USER;
    $phpmailer->Password   = SMTP_PASS;
    $phpmailer->SMTPSecure = SMTP_SECURE;
    $phpmailer->From       = SMTP_FROM;
    $phpmailer->FromName   = SMTP_NAME;
}

I’m calling wp_mail() in a function like so:

 function invite_others() {
            $team_name = $_GET['team_name'];

            $user_id = get_current_user_id();
            $user = get_userdata($user_id);
            $site = get_site_url();

            $message = "blah blah blah";
            $subject = "blah";
            $admin_email = get_option('admin_email');

            foreach($_POST as $name => $email) {
                if($email != $_POST['invite_others']){ 
                    $headers = "From: ". $admin_email . "\r\n" .
                        "Reply-To: " . $email . "\r\n";
                    $sent = wp_mail($email, $subject, strip_tags($message), $headers);
                }
            }

 }

I get the following error from wp_mail():

SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

2 Answers
2

Quite likely you’re using the wrong encryption/port combination. You are using port 465 for tls.

Port 465 should be used for SSL

Port 587 should be used for TLS

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