1 00:00:00,870 --> 00:00:06,410 In this video you'll set up a transactional email sending system within your live WordPress web site 2 00:00:06,450 --> 00:00:08,020 using send grid. 3 00:00:08,040 --> 00:00:13,380 There are two major advantages to using a service like send a grid instead of Google's Gmail servers 4 00:00:13,590 --> 00:00:15,400 like we learned in the last video. 5 00:00:15,510 --> 00:00:21,820 For one you're able to send email from the Web site's actual domain name instead of the gmail address. 6 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:28,650 Secondly dedicated email delivery companies like send grid allow more e-mail volume and are true experts 7 00:00:28,650 --> 00:00:31,020 at managing email deliverability. 8 00:00:31,020 --> 00:00:36,090 By the end of this lesson you'll set up the most professional and secure transactional email system 9 00:00:36,090 --> 00:00:38,250 possible for a WordPress Web site. 10 00:00:39,420 --> 00:00:46,170 First of all let's go into our WordPress dashboard and take a look at the ad plug ins page and just 11 00:00:46,170 --> 00:00:52,950 search for send grid and you can see that said grid has its own WordPress plugin that's designed to 12 00:00:52,950 --> 00:00:55,540 work inside of your Wordpress installation. 13 00:00:55,890 --> 00:01:02,400 So to set up sended the first thing you'll have to do is look at your installed plug ins list and just 14 00:01:02,490 --> 00:01:06,900 deactivate the postman s m t p plug it in. 15 00:01:07,020 --> 00:01:14,430 By clicking de-activate this will reset WordPress to be sending by the traditional method again and 16 00:01:14,610 --> 00:01:22,140 when you install the send grid plug in and activate it they won't conflict with each other. 17 00:01:22,150 --> 00:01:30,050 Now I should tell you that I was successfully able to use the postman S-M T.P. plug in to set up a send 18 00:01:30,070 --> 00:01:31,140 grid. 19 00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:39,370 If you notice inside of the postman plug in page if you look at the description it's designed for G-mail 20 00:01:39,610 --> 00:01:42,400 and others including Sun Grid. 21 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:44,400 It was a very easy set up. 22 00:01:44,410 --> 00:01:52,180 I just had to put my API credentials from center grid inside of the postman plug in settings and it 23 00:01:52,180 --> 00:01:53,310 worked perfectly. 24 00:01:53,650 --> 00:02:01,150 But since postman is made by a third party and if I wanted to keep using send grid into the future I 25 00:02:01,150 --> 00:02:08,470 think it's a better idea to use the supported send grid plug in instead and that way when send grid 26 00:02:08,470 --> 00:02:14,830 makes an update to their API or anything like that you'll be able to have send grid's plug in update 27 00:02:14,830 --> 00:02:16,960 itself when needed. 28 00:02:16,960 --> 00:02:23,620 So if I just show you very quickly if I activate the postman S-M T.P. plug in at the same time that 29 00:02:23,620 --> 00:02:26,020 send grid is activated. 30 00:02:26,020 --> 00:02:28,940 You can see that send good gives me an error message here. 31 00:02:29,110 --> 00:02:37,090 WP mail is the default mail sending system that's instead of Wordpress and it says that since WP mail 32 00:02:37,090 --> 00:02:41,280 has been declared by another plug in and that's the postman. 33 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:44,580 As empty people again you won't be able to use cent.. 34 00:02:44,770 --> 00:02:50,350 Right now I already have 7 grids set up inside Gray Davis dot com and I'm going to show you how to set 35 00:02:50,350 --> 00:02:55,500 it up by looking inside of my settings and inside of the send grid website. 36 00:02:55,900 --> 00:03:02,950 So for now I'll just go back down to the postman S-M T.P. settings page and I'll show you that I had 37 00:03:02,950 --> 00:03:08,100 actually gone and used this import export reset plugin setting. 38 00:03:08,290 --> 00:03:12,950 So when I clicked that I went down here and I was able to reset the plug in. 39 00:03:12,970 --> 00:03:15,730 This doesn't have any settings anymore because I've already reset it. 40 00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:21,190 But usually this button will appear red and you can just get rid of all of the S-M T.P. settings that 41 00:03:21,190 --> 00:03:24,430 you set up before using Gmail. 42 00:03:24,470 --> 00:03:29,810 So since this is having a plugin conflict and show me these this error I'm just going to go back to 43 00:03:29,810 --> 00:03:36,710 the installed plugins page inside my wordpress dashboard and I'm just going to deactivate postman as 44 00:03:36,780 --> 00:03:46,400 MCP great now you can see that I do have this grid plug in activated and if I go to the settings page 45 00:03:47,030 --> 00:03:51,610 it's just a single page and it has two authentication methods. 46 00:03:51,770 --> 00:03:57,830 And I found that the API key that I got from my second grade account was easy to set up. 47 00:03:57,820 --> 00:04:02,530 I just placed that code inside of here and chose API here. 48 00:04:02,570 --> 00:04:11,840 Now one thing to note if you do use user name and password instead of API then you have to use this 49 00:04:11,990 --> 00:04:15,940 external swift plug in to send via S.M. t.p. 50 00:04:15,950 --> 00:04:21,030 So I think it's easiest to set it using the API key and it's also the most secure. 51 00:04:21,290 --> 00:04:28,280 So I can choose my e-mail that I set up send grid with to use as the sending address and then I can 52 00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:33,030 choose a content type where I want just plain text or text along with HDMI. 53 00:04:33,350 --> 00:04:39,170 And that was it I clicked update settings and it was ready to go and I was able to go down here and 54 00:04:39,170 --> 00:04:40,500 sent a test email. 55 00:04:40,670 --> 00:04:42,990 So let's go through that process together. 56 00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:46,860 Go ahead and go to send grid dot com. 57 00:04:46,980 --> 00:04:48,290 And this is their home page. 58 00:04:48,330 --> 00:04:55,140 You can see that even at cent. They do both kinds of e-mail transactional e-mail and marketing e-mail 59 00:04:55,410 --> 00:04:57,350 and they differentiate the two. 60 00:04:57,360 --> 00:05:02,820 In fact when you're using their service for transactional e-mail it's a different side of their business 61 00:05:02,820 --> 00:05:08,000 that they use to do marketing e-mails or what you might call bulk e-mails. 62 00:05:08,010 --> 00:05:14,010 So first thing you want to do is to go and click sign up if you don't have an account already. 63 00:05:14,070 --> 00:05:20,190 Basically you enter an e-mail address and any other information they need and you click the sign up 64 00:05:20,190 --> 00:05:23,360 button and you have to go back and check your e-mail. 65 00:05:23,460 --> 00:05:28,260 And then they will go ahead and confirm your e-mail address. 66 00:05:28,370 --> 00:05:31,120 You can use this try for free button right here. 67 00:05:31,530 --> 00:05:38,490 And after you've confirmed your e-mail address you can log into send grid and then set up your free 68 00:05:38,490 --> 00:05:43,870 account you can pause a video now and go ahead and sign up for send grid. 69 00:05:43,870 --> 00:05:49,420 Now since I've already signed up for send good I'm going to go back to their home page and click the 70 00:05:49,420 --> 00:05:57,960 loggin button at the top right and I'll just use the username and password that I had set up when I 71 00:05:57,960 --> 00:06:04,620 signed up for sended and it opens up my send dashboard one of the great things about using sand grid 72 00:06:04,650 --> 00:06:10,190 is it has all of these great e-mail analytics when the dashboard is set up. 73 00:06:10,260 --> 00:06:16,080 It tells you your your different e-mails that have been sent in your recent activity could see that 74 00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:23,330 actually I sent two e-mails today after setting this up as a demo for this video inside of my account. 75 00:06:23,610 --> 00:06:28,500 Well once you're inside of your central dashboard there are some important things to set up to get your 76 00:06:28,550 --> 00:06:29,210 AP. 77 00:06:29,250 --> 00:06:35,850 I key that you need to put into your wordpress site down on the left hand side if you just click Settings 78 00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:39,240 you can see that there's an API keys button. 79 00:06:39,270 --> 00:06:45,180 Now I already have an API key that I set up with a name of postman API. 80 00:06:45,240 --> 00:06:46,610 Greg Davis. 81 00:06:46,860 --> 00:06:51,340 Now I use that same API key after getting it to work with postman. 82 00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:58,200 I turned off the postman plug in and installed the send good plug in and I was able to use that same 83 00:06:58,500 --> 00:06:59,780 API key. 84 00:06:59,790 --> 00:07:07,440 Now it's important to note that this is an API key ID and this is not my actual API key when they give 85 00:07:07,440 --> 00:07:08,510 you an API key. 86 00:07:08,550 --> 00:07:16,200 They have a warning on the page that says that you better copy and paste and save this API key in a 87 00:07:16,200 --> 00:07:17,590 safe location. 88 00:07:17,610 --> 00:07:23,210 I saved it into a document on my computer and remembered where it was so that I could retrieve it later. 89 00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:30,510 If I go to the settings here I could edit the details of this API key and this is something that you'll 90 00:07:30,510 --> 00:07:34,010 go through when you say create a new API key. 91 00:07:34,110 --> 00:07:41,430 What I did was I named the key and then I basically gave send grid through this key full access to all 92 00:07:41,430 --> 00:07:49,180 of the options so I clicked full access when I could and I create and I clicked read access and all 93 00:07:49,170 --> 00:07:50,560 of the other places. 94 00:07:50,610 --> 00:07:57,510 So I'm getting myself full access through this API key for the send grid service to work through my 95 00:07:57,510 --> 00:08:03,280 web site so I'll just cancel that since I've already used this blue button at the top right to create 96 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:05,230 my API key. 97 00:08:05,410 --> 00:08:12,880 Well I do have that API key and so there is if you look in the documentation at send grid you'll see 98 00:08:12,880 --> 00:08:17,730 that they recommend using the officials send grid WordPress plug in. 99 00:08:17,830 --> 00:08:23,170 If you click that it just takes you to WordPress dot org where you can look at the send grid plug in 100 00:08:23,770 --> 00:08:28,200 page back inside of the Wordpress dashboard. 101 00:08:28,210 --> 00:08:34,780 You know I just went to plug ins and knew I searched for censored and I was able to install this plug 102 00:08:34,780 --> 00:08:36,120 in on its own. 103 00:08:36,370 --> 00:08:43,780 So once you've copied the API key go back into the settings send grid and this is the send grid plug 104 00:08:43,780 --> 00:08:46,660 in settings and choose API key. 105 00:08:46,720 --> 00:08:50,780 Paste your entire API key into that field set. 106 00:08:50,920 --> 00:08:52,660 Click sendmail with API. 107 00:08:52,660 --> 00:08:59,020 If it's not selected already and you just have to select a name and then the email address from which 108 00:08:59,020 --> 00:09:04,710 you'd like to send mail and you can choose a couple of other optional fields if you like. 109 00:09:04,780 --> 00:09:11,770 I choose text slash HTL which would enable me to send H.T. e-mail based e-mails if I have that enabled 110 00:09:11,770 --> 00:09:18,560 inside of Wordpress or directly from cent. Then I click the update settings and that was it send grid 111 00:09:18,610 --> 00:09:19,790 was set up. 112 00:09:19,870 --> 00:09:26,260 So once you send a test mail you could send this potentially to the same address that you used at the 113 00:09:26,260 --> 00:09:28,210 top and that would work as a test. 114 00:09:28,570 --> 00:09:35,860 And I sent it to a different e-mail address that I have at my domain name and I just made a little test 115 00:09:35,860 --> 00:09:40,080 and click send and it gave me a message that that e-mail had sent correctly. 116 00:09:40,330 --> 00:09:46,270 And now if I go back to my e-mail account you can see that I've got an e-mail open. 117 00:09:46,270 --> 00:09:51,400 That was my subject line testing from center grid and I wrote Hi this is a test. 118 00:09:51,400 --> 00:09:56,020 So the e-mail came through correctly it came from the address I had placed in the field inside that 119 00:09:56,020 --> 00:09:56,650 plug in. 120 00:09:56,860 --> 00:09:58,180 And like we did before. 121 00:09:58,180 --> 00:10:00,880 Let's take a look at the source of this e-mail. 122 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:03,920 Now you're looking at all the headers up here. 123 00:10:04,060 --> 00:10:09,520 And if you scroll down and just look at the authentication results which is important stuff you can 124 00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:15,200 see that the SPF has passed and that's the sender policy framework. 125 00:10:15,280 --> 00:10:22,540 And you know if you scroll to the right just a little bit on that line there's a little bit extra. 126 00:10:22,660 --> 00:10:28,930 There is a scroll across just a little bit further and you can also see that there's a secondary type 127 00:10:28,930 --> 00:10:35,200 of e-mail authentication called DKIM and that also passed if you do a little bit of research you'll 128 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:38,590 see that there's three kinds of e-mail authentication. 129 00:10:38,620 --> 00:10:41,980 One is SPF and that's the first and most simple. 130 00:10:42,250 --> 00:10:48,010 And the second one is called DKIM and sender it has that automatically set up through their servers 131 00:10:48,370 --> 00:10:53,490 and there is a third type of authentication that actually failed here. 132 00:10:53,560 --> 00:11:00,880 But it's no big deal because I have the first two using at least an SPF record is the best idea if you 133 00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:02,100 can get the other two. 134 00:11:02,260 --> 00:11:05,130 All the better to set up D-mark. 135 00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:12,160 You have to set up another series of DNS records inside of your domain name so that recognizes that 136 00:11:12,180 --> 00:11:17,170 email sent from the Greg Davis dot com domain name is also authenticated. 137 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:22,840 I'm not worried about that very much right now but you can see that this has been sent through the send 138 00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:29,710 grid servers close that you can see that I also have a tab open here where it's my post. 139 00:11:29,740 --> 00:11:33,630 S.M. T-P test that I sent through the send grid's servers. 140 00:11:33,670 --> 00:11:39,210 Earlier I mentioned that I successfully set up send a grid through the postman plug in as well. 141 00:11:39,220 --> 00:11:44,820 This is just what their sample e-mail looks like when you send it to yourself. 142 00:11:44,890 --> 00:11:50,000 And if I look at a view source again I have authentication results. 143 00:11:50,020 --> 00:11:57,090 SPF equals pass as well as you can see that it's coming from the send grid dot net servers. 144 00:11:57,130 --> 00:12:06,400 Several places here in the header and I also have those same results in terms of authentication. 145 00:12:06,460 --> 00:12:07,490 Let me find that again. 146 00:12:07,500 --> 00:12:10,660 There's the DKA I am signatures. 147 00:12:10,690 --> 00:12:11,080 Here we go. 148 00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:20,950 If I find the authentication results I can see that I have the SPF equals pass and then over here a 149 00:12:20,950 --> 00:12:23,060 little bit further there it is. 150 00:12:23,060 --> 00:12:31,360 There's my DKIM is has passed as well and I don't have D-Mark set for my domain name yet in my DNS records 151 00:12:31,420 --> 00:12:33,510 at the domain or the server level. 152 00:12:33,580 --> 00:12:34,620 And so that's OK. 153 00:12:34,870 --> 00:12:41,560 But again that was successfully set up through the post-event S M T-P plug in which is referenced right 154 00:12:41,560 --> 00:12:48,810 here inside the header now if you followed along closely so far and pause the video and set up your 155 00:12:48,810 --> 00:12:54,720 own life site checking your emails being sent through the send good service your rate caught up to me 156 00:12:54,720 --> 00:12:55,120 here. 157 00:12:55,230 --> 00:12:58,950 Now if you are using flywheel to set up your life sites guess what. 158 00:12:58,950 --> 00:13:01,600 You didn't have to do anything at all. 159 00:13:01,620 --> 00:13:08,670 Again as I indicated in a previous video flywheel uses send good to send e-mails and they're already 160 00:13:08,670 --> 00:13:11,300 set up to do that through the Wordpress service. 161 00:13:11,310 --> 00:13:17,940 So you don't need to install the plug in or any other third party service except just let WordPress 162 00:13:17,970 --> 00:13:26,140 do its job because flywheel has already upgraded your wordpress site to send through Send good. 163 00:13:26,280 --> 00:13:34,110 One last quick piece of info I looked up inside the documentation of Sen grid about the D-mark authentication 164 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,330 and you can read a little bit about it here. 165 00:13:36,330 --> 00:13:42,540 It does say that before you can set up D-Mark authentication you do have to have the two previous methods. 166 00:13:42,540 --> 00:13:53,490 SPF and DKIM which stands for domain keys identify file mail and SPF and DKIM must be implemented before 167 00:13:53,490 --> 00:13:55,910 a D-Mark policy can be put into place. 168 00:13:55,920 --> 00:14:02,910 They also have an implementing D-Mark link right here in this little description and that opens up some 169 00:14:02,910 --> 00:14:10,260 instructions about setting it up and this would be the most secure email sending system that you could 170 00:14:10,260 --> 00:14:11,010 set up. 171 00:14:11,010 --> 00:14:16,710 You do have to have access to your domain name and do a few pretty complicated things. 172 00:14:16,710 --> 00:14:22,860 One important thing to note is that D-Mark is a powerful way to help prevent malicious entities it says 173 00:14:22,890 --> 00:14:25,250 but D-Mark isn't for everyone. 174 00:14:25,260 --> 00:14:27,750 If you own a small domain you're probably OK without it. 175 00:14:27,750 --> 00:14:32,730 They say right here if you've ever had problems with phishing in the past or have a business that's 176 00:14:32,730 --> 00:14:35,970 financially oriented it might be right for you. 177 00:14:35,970 --> 00:14:45,480 They said in the previous page that the SPF framework and the DK I am would have to fail before D-Mark 178 00:14:45,690 --> 00:14:47,670 is even looked at. 179 00:14:48,670 --> 00:14:54,340 In this lesson you set up a more secure and robust email sending system for transactional email sent 180 00:14:54,340 --> 00:14:56,200 through your Wordpress Web site. 181 00:14:56,260 --> 00:15:02,830 You can see that the additional layer of DKIM authentication is used as well as the first layer called 182 00:15:02,860 --> 00:15:05,350 SPF or sender policy framework. 183 00:15:05,560 --> 00:15:10,900 Standard also gives the website the ability to send more emails per day and per month than the Google 184 00:15:10,900 --> 00:15:16,960 Gmail system we set up in the last video in the next video we quickly set up another email service called 185 00:15:16,990 --> 00:15:19,210 Sparke post like standard. 186 00:15:19,210 --> 00:15:24,820 They have their own supported WordPress plugin and it's a similar setup to send good but the spark post-service 187 00:15:24,820 --> 00:15:29,740 has a free level that allows for up to 100000 emails per month. 188 00:15:29,740 --> 00:15:30,460 Let's set it up