How to enable SMTP for Outgoing Emails
SMTP is a protocol used for the outgoing email delivery and it is typically used indeed for sending emails from your email account. The protocol is widely used and in the next few lines of this tutorial we will provide more information on how to set it up for your WooCommerce based Online Store.
To enable SMTP for the outgoing emails, you need to:
Step 1: Add the SMTP plugin to your Online Store
Step 2: Configure the SMTP Settings of the plugin
Step 1 Add the SMTP plugin to your Online Store
Unfortunately WooCommerce does not integrate any features or plugins for the configuraton of that protocol. Thus you will need to add an additional plugin for the Wordpress application which will allow you to utilize that protocol for outgoing mails. The authors of WooCommerce are recondning for a certain plugin to be used and you will be able to install it following the usual process of Wordpress plugin installation.
First and foremost you will need to login into the admin area of your Wordpress application and then to navigate to Plugins>Add new.
Once you are on the main plugin installation page, you will need to find the "WP Mail SMTP" plugin. This can be done easily if you type the name of that plugin into the search box and press enter. The first result you will get will be the plugin you need.
By clicking on the Install button you will get the pluign installed on your website and in order to activate the same you will need to click on the Activate Plugin link available right after the installation is finished.
This action will cause for the plugin to be activated and with that the installation of the "WP Mail SMTP" plugin is finished.
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Step 2 Configure the SMTP Settings of the plugin
Now that you are done with the installation and the activation procedure for your plugin it is time to get it functional by configuring its settings correctly. Please access the Dashboard of the admin area of your website and navigate to Settings>Email.
On the next page you will be able to find the Advanced Email Options page where you will be given with the option to configure few simple settings.
- From Email - The email which will be displayed in the "From" field of your outgoing emails
- From name - The name which will be displayed for the outgoing emails once they are delivered to the clients
- Mailer - The type of email handling function that will be used. Please set that to "Send all Wordpress emails via SMTP" as this is the function we are writing about
- Return Path - Here you will be able to activate the return path to be the same as the "From Email"
Once you are done with the settings from this section please move forward to the next one which is called SMTP Options. There you will be able to find and configure the following options:
SMTP Host - The hostname of the SMTP Service. Usually here you can type mail.yourdomain.com, replacing the substitute yourdomain.com with your actual domain name
SMTP Port - The port of the SMTP service, usually you should use port 25
Encryption - The encryption method that should be used when sending emails. Please keep in mind that this will affect the SMTP port if enabled
Authentication - This option should be used if the outgoing mail server requires authentication from the users
Username - The username which should be used for the authentication infront of the mail server. Here you should use a fully qualified email account such as email@yourdomain.com
Password - The password for the email account used as a username.
Once you are done with these changes please click on the Save Changes button so all the changes you have performed can be saved.
The final section from this configuration page will help you to test if everythign was configure properly and there you will be able to simply input an email address which the system will use to send a test message.
How to Edit the Email Templates in WooCommerce
With WooCommerce you have the option to easily edit all the email templates which your Store will be using. In the next few lines of this tutorial we will show you where these templates can be found and also how to edit them based on a single template review.
To edit the email templates of your Store, you will need to:
Step 1: Access the Emails Settings Menu
Step 2: Edit an Email Template
Step 1 Access the Emails Settings menu
In order to access the page where you will be able to edit the desired template you will need to login into the admin area of your Wordpress application and navigate to WooCommerce>Settings>Emails.
You will notice how there are few links just below the main navigation between the different settings groups of WooCommerce.
New order – The email template used when the client submit a new order
Cancelled order - The email template used when the client cancels an order
Processing order – Email informing the client that the order is processed by an admin
Completed order – Email informing the client that the order has been completed
Customer invoice – Email providing information about an invoice related to submitted order
Customer note - Email Informing the customer that there has been a not added to the order
Reset password – Email providing the customer with options to reset the password
New account – Welcome email sent regarding the creation of a new account
These are the actual templates you can edit and in order for this to happen you will need to simply click on the desired template for editing.
Step 2 Edit an Email Template
Since the email templates are quite a number we will not discuss each template individually but instead we will show you how to edit a single template as all of the options are mostly common for all of the templates.
Let’s review the New order email template. For every template the common fields are the following:
Enable/Disable – If the sending of this email type should be enabled or disabled
Subject – The subject which will be displayed to the customer
Email Heading – The headline of the email
Email type – If the email should be delivered in HTML, Plain text or in Multipart format
HTML template – Here you have the option to directly edit the code of the template. First of course you will need to copy the template to the directory of the theme you are using
Now that you have edited the template the only thing remaining is to save the changes by simply clicking on the Save Changes button and you are ready to go.
How to Configure the Email Options
Since your Online Store will be sending emails for nearly everything going on with products, orders, stock and many more features you would most probably want to configure the base template for these. In the next few lines of this tutorial we will show you how this should be done precisely.
To edit the Email Options, you need to complete these steps:
Step 1: Access the Email Options page
Step 2: Configure the Email Options
Step 1 Access the Email Options page
In order to access the default configuration for all of the emails going out from your Online Store you will need to of course login into the admin area of your Wordpress application and navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails.
Once there you will need to configure two section of settings – the Email Sender Options and the Email Template options. Let’s review all of these.
Step 2 Configure the Email Options
The first section called Email Sender Options mostly contains options related to the sender of the system emails. The options here are only two and you should be able to configure those based on your personal needs.
The second section called Email Template is related to the design of the base template for your emails and here you will be able to find the following settings:
Header Image – Here you can define the image you would like to be displayed in the header of your emails
Email Footer Text – Here you can define the text which will be displayed in the Footer of every email
Base Colour – Here you can define the base color for every email template
Background Colour – Here you can define the color of the background for each email
Email Body Background Colour – The color of the background for the body section of your emails
Email Body Text Colour – The color of the text used in the body of each email
Once you are done with all these changes please use the Save Changes button so you can save them all and finalize this edit.
