In almost all cases, use the SMTP (outgoing) mail server provided by your internet service provider (i.e. the company that provides your DSL, cable internet, or dialup service), rather than Birdhouse’s SMTP. We recommend this because increasing numbers of ISPs are blocking access to 3rd-party SMTP servers in an effort to reduce outgoing spam.

Check the SMTP settings for the email account you have with your ISP, and copy those settings into the SMTP configuration for your Birdhouse email account. You’ll still be retrieving mail from Birdhouse, just not sending through Birdhouse. Doing this will have no effect on how your email appears to others.

Instructions for blocked users

Laptop users who find themselves moving from work to home to Internet cafe’ find themselves in an SMTP predicament if the ISP at each location has different SMTP requirements. Continually changing your SMTP server settings is a hassle. In addition, some ISPs (such as Netscape Dial-Up) block all standard access to 3rd-party SMTP. For these users, Birdhouse provides an alternate SMTP service that should work in almost all cases (we’ve tested with SBC DSL, as well as cable internet providers Cablevision and Comcast, though we can’t guarantee it will work in all possible cases).

If this situation applies to you, you’ll need to configure your mail client with the following settings:

SMTP server: gong.birdhouse.org (or mail.yourdomain.com)
Username / Account name: Your full email address on the Birdhouse server
Pass: Your Birdhouse email password
SMTP Authentication: Yes
Port: 587 (The default port 25 is the one commonly blocked by ISPs)

SMTP Authentication means that your mail client must send a username and password to send mail, as well as to receive. Here is how SMTP-Auth looks in Microsoft Entourage’s account settings dialog (different email applications will look different, but the concept is the same).

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