Messages sent from Moodle can undergo both the PHP mail function or thru SMTP server connection.
In some cases, the PHP mail feature may be disabled on the server (Depending on the web hosting agency) to prevent spammers from sending emails thru compromised websites.
To paintings around this, the e-mail may be configured to connect to an SMTP server. An SMTP connection will connect with an email server with login details, authenticating the sending email address. This will permit the receiving e-mail deal with the server to just accept the e-mail as authenticated. This is ideal because a few e-mail servers do no longer permit unauthenticated emails to go through to their server.
The following steps will provide an explanation for a way to configure Moodle 2.3 messaging to apply SMTP
Configuring SMTP settings with Moodle
> Please login to the Moodle admin panel
> Please go to the Site administration > Plugins > Message outputs > Email in the settings section
> Please configure the SMTP settings at the Email page,
> Moodle will be using the PHP mail function to send emails by default.
> If the administrator wants the email to go to a specific SMTP server, Like Gmail or Yahoo, the SMTP configuration settings can be adjusted to allow a different server to be used
> Here a Gmail email address will be used for the SMTP settings. The following fields will need to be configured for the mail to work. Below is an example of a generic Gmail SMTP setup
> Once you finished please click on Save changes
