Reply To: Help! Activation Email not sent–nothing works
**SOLVED**
Thank you @Aces for answering and being helpful. All seems to be working now. I will post the solution below for those, like @Whisprr, who have the same problem:
Basically, the “WP Mail SMTP” plugin method from the link Aces provided worked. I just think the link is very vague and doesn’t explain at all how these plugins are supposed to help or what exactly you are supposed to do with them–it just says ‘most people found these helpful’. So I had to watch this youtube video, which explained how to solve the issue using the WP Mail SMTP, step by step: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GsHbf4Gitw
Watch it! I would just skip the part about using the FTP to finish installing the plugin (skip 3:00-6:20). The plugin should install perfectly fine.
Essentially, anyone who has the activation/registration email problem needs to download the “WP Mail SMTP” plugin and then enter the correct settings, as described in the video. I ran into a problem (mentioned earlier in this post) because GMAIL does not allow the plugin access to the account and labels it as suspicious activity–this kept returning an error message in the debug (test email). I also didn’t feel comfortable putting my real email’s username and password, un-hidden, into the username and password form, so I created a new YAHOO account especially for sending emails from my wordpress blog instead of my normal account, to use for this plugin.
It worked! The debug/test email did not return an error and when I tested the registration for my site, I finally received the activation email–albeit buried in my spam folder.
Hopefully this helps others because BuddyPress and Word Press do not make it clear that this needs to be done in order to SEND (rather than receive) email from your account or for member registration to work–this is why many people who are Word Press novices can become confused when site registration doesn’t work.
