Alex Shirley wrote
This is not a flaw, this is a perfectly legit enhancement request whereby you are asking DNN to handle emails better (in fact what we really need is an email "framework"/provider that works on a per portal basis.
I get by just fine without third party products. Even you you don't get by George rightly states that there are third party products available. You can also use smart relay SMTP server. For these reasons I don't see the issue other then expecting DNN to fulfill every single expectation (and I'm not saying that isn't valid either, but it isn't a reasonable expectation).
There are actually far more important bigger enhancements that DNN needs right now if you follow support.dotnetnuke.com. And if somebody wants to write a email provider then please help out as it will be most useful.
Nothing funny about it :). What George suggests is useful and I think there are plenty other services that will redirect mail.
This limitation is very serious for a DNN installation which hosts sites for independent users. Yeah it works for you because you probably have your own installation running your own sites. That why it's not important for you and others who run their own web sites.
A DNN installation running tens or hundreds of sites where all their emails are being sent through a single account on the mail server is just stupid. There's zero control for the mail server administrator. If a user is an abusive spammer, there's no way for the administrator to find out who is doing it. This would be very frustrating for the administrator because all the emails are coming through the same account regardless which web site sent it.
The implementation is so simple. Just add 3 settings in the portal settings, one for mail user, one for mail password and one for mail server name and let any core module which sends out emails to use the portal's mail settings instead of using the host mail settings. I mean come on. The implementation is simple yet the usage ramification is big.
DNN is used in hosting platforms. This mail limitation needs to grow to support multiple sites. Can you think of a hosting company like Godaddy giving its hundreds of thousands of users the same single mail account to send out email!? This is insane.
You keep saying 'smart relay SMTP server' and you don't explain what it means or how it can be used to solve this DNN limitation. If DNN is sending out emails using the same mail account, how would any type of mail server help?
I don't expect DNN developers to fulfill every expectation but the solution here is simple, email functionality is already built in. Just make the portal use its own mail settings instead of the hosts'.
The problem gets bigger because some third party modules use DNN's default mail settings.