In this video I'll show you how to set up transactional email with Sparke post but only after you've
tried it as a challenge similar to send grid spark post is a transactional email specialist since they
also have a dedicated WordPress plug in and they have a free level that allows for sending up to 100000
emails a month.
It's a great choice for your client sites and your own.
You will probably have a good handle on e-mail that WordPress sends so far but by the end of this lesson
you'll be a master OK.
The only thing you need to know is the RL is spark Post dot com and that they do have a free WordPress
plugin in the repository.
Ready go.
OK I hope that went well for you.
Only difference here is instead of us try for free.
I'm going to be hitting the logon button because I already have a spark post membership.
Also I'm going to go back to the plugins page of my dashboard.
Gray Davis dot com and I'm just going to simply deactivate the send grid plug in.
Now with both of my other MT P or Sendmail plugins d activated.
I'm free to go and find the spark post plug in and get logged into my site.
Spark posts and go ahead and set it up.
So let's the spark posts in the search bar brings it up right there.
4000 active installs right from the install plug in success page or click activate plug in
or right great if I scroll down and look at it Spart post.
Ok I can go to the settings page right from here probably under settings.
Yes there is a spark post settings link right there.
Anyway And so now that I have this set up I see I'll go into can see that I used my email address Sparke
post at Greg Davis dot com.
That's actually an email alias but I used it to sign up for Sparke post right.
I've got a hundred thousand emails included in ten thousand email daily limit.
Wow that's a lot around.
Let's go back to that spark post plug in.
I'm going to use it send email using Skype first and then what are my choices here.
The API is the default or I could use as a.p with two different ports.
Let's try using the API.
So I need an API key from SPARC first.
So OK back to spark post you're going to go under my account.
And then I have AP guys here send email to me.
Now I'm going to create a new API key that's when I'm going to call.
This is my Greg Davis duck API key.
Just give it all permissions
I can just let it come from any IP address and click add API.
OK.
Now this is this was true of second grade and it's true of sparkplugs.
They're only going to show this to me once and when I never get away from here I won't be able to see
it again.
So I'll click copy.
All right.
And then I'm actually going to go in to a document on my computer and save this API key in a text document
where I can find it later a puzzle video now just for a second OK I'm back.
I don't know if you made a quick note of this but I've got a little notification here.
Hey there.
I'm using the sandbox domain and it's good for testing.
But I can only send 50 e-mails with that domain.
So I've got to set up my own sending domain to send more e-mails but I'll just use this domain for testing.
At this point I'll go through setting up your own sending domain with Sparke post after I've set it
up and tested it with my wordpress site.
So for now I have my API key copied on the clipboard and I'm going back to the 8 to the Wordpress dashboard
and I'm just going to paste the AP API key in there and I don't need to use templates at this point
or overrides could actually come I can use my own name from for a from name and I can use it as my email
address at my domain.
Right now Ptomaine must match with one of your varified sending domains and when left.
Thank Greg Davis dot com will be used as an email domain.
OK.
I wonder if that will work for testing but if I just say save changes and see what it tells me right
I'm going to be using that testing spark post-box.
Let's if I sent a an email to testing at Greg Davis dot com.
My testing email address and sure I can show debugging messages and let's click send test email test
email could not be sent.
Probably because I put this email address as the from email.
Let's see if change is right there.
Let's try one more time.
I wonder if you ran into this problem as well because I haven't verified my Greg Davis doc sending domain.
I believe that's why I'm getting this error right here.
It says message.
Invalid domain right here that pretty much tells me I'm going to need to because I am sending from an
actual Web site here.
Greg Davis dot com.
I'm going to have to verify that domain up here before I can test the email.
So let's click.
What does it say right here sending commands.
It's not ready to send from Greg Davis daka.
I have to complete at least one of the below to verify my domain ownership.
So SPF we're familiar with that DK.
I am familiar with that or email verified by email.
So I wonder if you went through this process.
If I have to I have to verify my ownership by email and they'll send me an email to either abuse that
Gray Davis dot com or postmaster.
Greg Davis dot com.
So in my case I can actually create an email address where I host my email as you saw in a previous
video at Rackspace Cloud.
Pause the video right now and create that.
So as you remember I host my Greg Davis dot com email at Rackspace apps and so I've logged into Rackspace
to my control panel and you can see here I've created an alias called post-master and it might take
several minutes.
In my experience it comes very very quickly and so will click verify email right here says Email sent
and if I go into my mailbox OK here's my message from Sparke post.
Please verify your sending domain and I'll just click on this link and it will open Sparke post in another
tab in my browser probably giving me a message that I have had success verifying my domain.
Great so now they believe that I own Greg Davis dot com and so they're preventing people from abusing
domains and sending spam from other people's domain names and that's great that makes it safer for us
all.
And I'll show you in a little bit later how to set up an SPF manually at your domain and a DK.
I am for better sending and I would want to set both of those up manually so that I can get them done.
You can see this is a little bit more complicated than send good which had that easy system and had
SPF and DK.
K I am set up for me.
Ok so I'm back in the Wordpress dashboard in the spark post plug in settings page and since my settings
should all just be the same I can actually see I am going to use my own name and I want this email address
to be the email that the from email is and again I'll try to send to my testing email address that's
10 send that test email test e-mail sent successfully.
Great because they have verified my domain name.
Now open up my email program and let's check it out.
I'll read them in my email program and I've got that email from Spart post.
Open up.
It says part.
Post email.
Test in the subject and says Hooray you've got mail.
Regards.
Excellent.
Well let's look at the view source.
Look at the headers just like we did before.
I've got a DKIM signature actually that they've set up for me automatically just like send agreed my
authentication results look good Sender Policy Framework is a pass.
That's great.
And let's go over to the DKIM.
Now that is a fail in this case.
The key is not found in my DNS and that was actually expected.
Sparkplugs takes a little bit more manual set up to make the DKIM failed and I will expect the D-mark
to also fail which it did but I'm receiving e-mail straight from Sparke post with just an email verification
which is good news.
Now I'm wondering how it went for you as a student were you able to create a special e-mail address
called abuse or postmaster at your domain name or did you look at some of the instructions regarding
creating an SPF record and a DKIM record.
Well either way is possible to do.
And if you looked it up the SPF record has to be configured in the DNS records for your domain name.
And that depends on how your DNS is being set from your domain name.
For me.
I've showed you before at Greg Davis dot com I point the name servers directly at my site Ground server
and therefore I can change the DNS settings within my site Ground see panel.
In another case I have the DNS zone file here available to me in Go Daddy where I can set different
SPF records DKIM records in different kinds of DNS records depending on how you have it set up.
You may have had a different set up than me that I used in this video.
Just like around many topics with web site development you may have had to look up on Google or try
and figure out by looking on the Internet and information about how to do certain things hopefully you
were able to do a little bit of research and find where you needed to be.
For me I need to open the see panel for Greg Davis dot com and there's some different DNS settings that
I need to make over here.
But let's look and see what Sparke post tells me to do.
So what I need to do is make a DNS record within Greg Davis dot com that the host name is Gray Davis
dot com.
It's a text record or a t text record.
And this is the value that I need to put in there so that Sparke post has my domain verified via an
SPF record.
So I'll copy that which is copied to my clipboard.
Now if I go back in to see panel I know that advanced DNS zone editors what I want and now I want to
add a txt record so let's see the hostname is name in this case we know that it's Greg Davis dot com
is what it asked me to put right there.
It's a text record and the data that I want there is right here.
TTL means time to live.
And I'll just use the standard number that all of my other zone file records use.
Fourteen four hundred.
It's basically a time that it will go back and recognize changes.
All right I've added the DNS record and we can go back and refresh Sparke post right away to see if
they recognize it now DNS changes especially at the domain level can take 24 to even 48 hours to propagate
across the Internet based on your DNS provider.
I'm aware that site ground I think when I'm controlling it with the C panel is very fast go daddy has
a domain registrar is also very very fast.
But I've had slower domain registrars in my past when I've looked at domains from client sites and such.
So let's just go back and see if I just test the SPF record.
Nope it looks like it needs to propagate across the internet.
Looks like this is a slightly different DNS record than I had before.
Possibly because I already had an refresh this page after I had verified it with the postmaster's email
address.
So I just copied this here and let's go ahead and change that.
So if I have named Greg there's that come here is where's my text record.
Looks like I've got a bunch of nice ones.
I do have some D.
DK I am records here.
Where's my text record.
Here it is.
Now this last one right here.
I've actually got some leftover text records in here from a Rackspace email from setting up my domain
with Rackspace.
And so for this one I'm going to they're not using that right now and not using Rackspace to send email
from Greg Davis dot com from the Web site.
I'm going to get rid of that one.
And I am going to edit this text record.
So instead of having that long one I'm just going to paste the short one at record write so successfully
updated that DNS record and let's see if I go back up here and see if that will work.
That looks much better a nice green checkbox.
Excellent.
Now what does it say I need to do to get a DKIM record so I could see that I could have DKIM records
inside of my domain inside a C panel.
You know what I might do is I might just remove my old DKIM records.
There is one and there is one
know from and delete that one and delete this one.
Great now and free of DKIM records right now and I'm going to be adding a new record right here.
So it's a text record.
The hostname is not my domain but it is a different domain key with a special character from Sparke
posts.
Copy that as the hostname place the name there I'll go 14 400 as normal.
This is going to be a text record.
And now I just need the last piece of data I can just copy it.
You can see it's very long because it's very secure for email pay set there and click add record.
Great.
OK.
I look at it it's right down here.
Yeah.
That's that domain key.
Now let's see if it recognizes it I'll test that DKIM record.
Oh a nice green check box.
You can see that it takes a little bit of doing sometimes to get everything set up right and everyone's
situation is a little bit different depending on where your DNS is held and how your domain is set up.
Now I've just done a quick test after waiting a few minutes to let the DNS propagate a little bit.
I put my name and my e-mail address back in there and I sent an e-mail to testing it.
Greg Davis dot com and sent that test e-mail.
I did receive an email from Gilia Gray Davis dot com.
And then I also checked out the source and under authentication results I was very happy to see that
I had got the SPF pass right here.
Also I've got a DKIM pass which was excellent.
And if you followed over a little bit further I actually got a D-Mark pass which is something that Sparke
post is preventing me which is the most secure you can get in this lesson.
I challenged you to configure a new service Sparke post that you probably hadn't used before.
If you had to look up some information to get it set up right then great.
Sometimes that's what makes web development interesting and fun.
You need to be creative to solve problems in the next few videos.
We'll get into marketing email and how you can connect third party services like MailChimp to WordPress
Web sites by setting up an email app to inform you or your clients can collect a marketing list of emails
and manage them efficiently.
Let's go