How can I test whether universal email works during web site development?

Hi,

How can I test whether universal email works during web development since I have not put my files to the host server?

you would need to have an SMTP server installed locally.

beware though, that you would need to edit the universal email settings to use the remote SMTP server before putting it up.

Thanks. Jason.
But how could I edit the universl email setting to use the remote SMTP server?
I did not see a place to do that.

Dave

after adding Universal Email to a page, you can edit it by Double Clicking the Server Behavior in the Server Behaviors list.

Jason:

Could I use Gmail smtp server to test universal email?

Thanks,

Dave

no, the gmail smtp server requires authentication to send emails.

Thanks, Jason.

What SMTP servers do you recommend for local testing?
I did not find any documents related to this important topic (testing Universal Email before putting up the web pages). I think it is important because, if we put it up before testing, it may not work due to whatever reasons.


Dave

Can I suggest that you create a development folder on the actual server to do your testing, when all is working all you'll have to do is move everything into the root folder.

Really you can't test email in your live environment locally. 90% of problems reported with Universal Email are due to the SMTP server configuration. The only way to test if your server is configured to send emails is to do it on the live server.

Probably the best technique is to upload your site to a subdirectory of your live server... something like testing/ and test the whole site there including email functionality. Testing emails locally is not a good indicator of how or if it will work on the live server and is really only effective when verifying the email body contents are correct.

If you have a windows server you can install the IIS SMTP server and use your localhost to send emails.