Fluent: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate during email test

Hello.

Since I ran into exactly the same trap and I see that Kenneth′s
help-request is not answered by no one after that almost 2 months
have passed, I see once more how bloody lonely the WP-user is.

I have loaded now the 4th smtp-plugin, with Fluent SMTP.
I had to delete all 3 former SMTP plugins, since none worked.

It is fuck… complicated, unbelievable opaque and confusing to
set up a working Mail-Form. But no one talks about it. Neither
has anyone ever mentioned that the default php-system set up on
Bluehost ist practically unusable, since all the mails it sends
to the customers end up as spam or are blacklisted – or both.
This fact is simply kept secret.

Sometimes i think those who have studied the opaque and obscure
ways of setting up email and WordPress in general needed years
for it, to get used to it and then all pretend it would be easy
to use it. They behave like the priest-cast of a conspiratorial
religious community. It is sooo strange. It borders to insanity,
how complicated the set-up of a smtp-server still is these days.
All the old mail-protocolls from the 1980-ees should be deposed
on the digital garbage-heap of history. we neither use Zeppelins
no more today. Up to this day I have not grasped the theoretical
model of how email works. And that despite the fact that I bought
my first computer in 1977, a TRS80 with a Zilog processor and
16 KB of RAM. I bet 90 percent of all users are in the same
situation, even though no one would admit that. It is a pity.

I should cancel the whole account at Bluehost now. But I have
said that too often before and started then again to tinker with
the mess again. Its a time- & nerve-wrecking Sysiphos-untertaking.

I could vaumit all over my desk now, so strong I am upset with it.

Look at my site, ( oedi-staat.com ) there you can see me in the
middle of my construction-site.

Thomas

Obviously, the best what I can do, I do. I answer on my own helpreguest which I placed here 8 hours ago. I do this not for selfish reasons. No. I have the true intention to help the open source community even though I am more a victim than a profiteur.Even though I am really angry I do not do it for my own selfish reasons. I mean, who has ever answered his own help request in this Forum before – except me?

How inconsistent and illogical the installation of an SMTP server under WordPress on Bluehost is my topic here. Basically there are only two errors. But I paid too much to correct them. Approximately 25 hours I spent on this opaque and obscure setup.

I installed 2 smtp-servers as plugins before only to throw them out again. Then the last one seemed to be promising. It was “Fluent SMTP”. Yes, it is working now. But again: The price I paid was too high to make it running for my outgoing mails.

Let me ask you some questions here:

1) Why cannot Bluehost pre-configure the SMTP Server for their customers automatically?

2) Why am i told in every Forum and under every help-hint that my mail-server is

mail.oedi-staat.com?

That is not true. My mail-server is in truth
box2x3x.bluehost.com.

It is even worse in this unorganised community: The first smtp-server I installed was “POST SMTP”. “One of the most popular SMTP plugins”, they say. And these people do not shy away from saying that my outgoing smtp server should be addressed as “smtp.oedi-staat.com”. 3 different explanations on one fact. This is simply crazy and needs grande streamlining. It makes me insane. I only ask myself if they lead me astray intentionally or if this disinformation (everywhere in WP) is based on operational blindness. You guys must answer this for yourself. I can only diagnose these things.
Then – during the setting of ALL 3 smtp-servers I installed the user is asked for “Your smtp-username” and “your smtp-password”. Fine. Someone who has never had contact or touch to this tortuous awkward questions thinks, of course, he must invent a new name and a new password for this purpose. Everybody who is new to this will think so. But no. Oh, no, of course not. We developers of the smtp-mailers, we are the worlds uncrowned champions of awkwardness and encrypted secrets. And immediately you run into ther next trap. I would have NEVER EVER have thought that there is only your common mailname and your common mail-password expected. The mail you use every day. Why do you not ask for my email and email-password? Because you are elitist. You ask for this mysterious SMTP-username and SMTP-password.

Then, when I de-activated and deleted my plugin “fluent smtp” and wanted to reload it fresh and clean to correct the errors I made above (again: that i committed these errors was not my fault, but the fault of anti-intuitive, contradictory information of 3 different parties here) that worked neither. I could not find an entry into the set-up of “Fluent SMTP”. Possibly it was not erased enough or there was any cache involved or the site https://www.fluentsmtp.com allowed not for a fresh start. i do not know it. on the 4th or 5th trial however (I do not know how) I was in it again, could reconfigure the setting and now all my test-mails went through with success. Of course I am very, very relieved now. as I said above I just want to show you herewith in what strange waters the whole hosting-community sails. Their thinking is kind of trapped in their professional box. The first thing should be to streamline all instructions in matters of smtp. I still do not understand why I need an external smtv-provider when I installed the “Fluent SMTP” plugin, which is surely the best product of its kind momentary. Surely. But still a little awkward, But the real nightmare are all these blacklisted, rejected mails from the PHP-mailing which nobody ever mentioned in the glossy advertisements on Bluehost. It is very sad. Having said that I cannot be grateful enough to one guy in India who helped me out of my misery yesterday. His name was “” SHRADA “”. If he had not given me the tip to address the smtp-server with a BOX before and bluehost after the “Mail” entry I would be the eternal Sysiphos reloaded from the greek tragedy. Their support-job in India is surely not easy, not to say it is possibly a thankless job.
“Thank you, Shrada”. Without him I had never achieved to run my own smtp-server on Bluehost.