Did some checking and troubleshooting, and believe I got it working now, so if others run into the same problem it can possibly be solved without installing a smtp plugin:
Found a solution here:: https://seoneurons.com/wordpress/configure-wordpress-smtp/
So I updated wp-config.php and functions.php in my child theme as described:
wp-config.php:
// SMTP email settings (wp-config.php)
define( 'SMTP_username', '[email protected]' ); // username of host like Gmail
define( 'SMTP_password', 'gmail-app-password' ); // password for login into the App
define( 'SMTP_server', 'smtp.gmail.com' ); // SMTP server address
define( 'SMTP_FROM', '[email protected]' ); // Your Business Email Address
define( 'SMTP_NAME', 'Your from Name' ); // Business From Name
define( 'SMTP_PORT', '587' ); // Server Port Number
define( 'SMTP_SECURE', 'tls' ); // Encryption - ssl or tls
define( 'SMTP_AUTH', true ); // Use SMTP authentication (true|false)
define( 'SMTP_DEBUG', 0 ); // for debugging purposes only
functions.php in child theme
// Emails settings in functions.php in child theme, values set in wp-config.php
add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'my_phpmailer_smtp' );
function my_phpmailer_smtp( $phpmailer ) {
$phpmailer->isSMTP();
$phpmailer->Host = SMTP_server;
$phpmailer->SMTPAuth = SMTP_AUTH;
$phpmailer->Port = SMTP_PORT;
$phpmailer->Username = SMTP_username;
$phpmailer->Password = SMTP_password;
$phpmailer->SMTPSecure = SMTP_SECURE;
$phpmailer->From = SMTP_FROM;
$phpmailer->FromName = SMTP_NAME;
}
What exactly solved it, I do not know, but it could be one of the following:
1: SMTP authentication was added, du not believe it was used before
2: TLS encryption was added
3: My website is at simply.com, and I added their smtp server: websmtp.simply.com
My site is a small closed site, used for News, Calendar & Collaboration between about 20 golf players, so not a lot of activities. The site has activated: “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”
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