Email: Periodic group distribution to club members

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1

Are we able to use this new forum to aid or benefit the periodic group email distribution to club members?

As one example, I know that presently there are some challenges with the successful receipt of a club email to those with a Gmail email address.

2

Huh, interesting, in my case we have a business Google account and we aren’t having any issues with receiving emails from the forum. Perhaps the errors come from the domain for the club, “okcastroclub.com”. The site’s security ticket is not functioning properly and that will effect any email domains associated with it.

3

I have not tested it with Gmail accounts. It looks like you have a Gmail account are you getting emails? It works with Hotmail and UCO email. Might have to make some changes since I’m getting more emails than I think I want.

4

I have Gmail and I am getting emails

5

This is an interesting question and touches on all kinds of things. Without getting too in the weeds, Discourse emails are sent with a service called SendGrid. SendGrid also sends out the new member emails if someone joins online, and it sends the PixInsight emails if someone signs up for the Imaging Session. SendGrid is a service that specializes in transactional emails and the domains involved are all authenticated.

The renewal emails are sent straight from @okcastroclub.com through the code that runs the club member database. These are the ones that cause issues, probably due to the lack of SSL on the club domain.

SendGrid sends out metrics that track bounces, spam, etc so we can tell if something bounced (I think only one email has ever bounced with SendGrid, and it was Mitche for some reason).

To answer your actual question though, yes we can use SendGrid to send all kinds of emails to all sorts of people. We haven’t yet, but it’s an option to explore. I have some ideas that I don’t want to really share publically yet, but @Tom.Graham I think you’re onto something. :slight_smile:

6

Thanks @sdm and @DaveNH6SM. Yes, my @gmail.com address is now saved within both forums as desired and fully functional here on Discourse.

I should have been more explicit: the earlier problems with a gmail account that I experienced previously were:

  1. Club emails not received: Annual club membership dues renewal emails not received (and not recoverable from gmail spam folder) to my preferred gmail address
  2. Desired email alerts/notifications from old Discussion Forum not received to my preferred gmail address.

As a work-around to that legacy, known email delivery with gmail, I temporarily substituted a less-preferred (non-Gmail) email address.