Thanks Daniel, yes I have have the CMandrill plug-in activated. Thanks for that explanation it helps my understanding. I was obviously confused and thought that as well as having the Mandrill plug-in activated I also needed to set up the SMTP Mandrill stuff in Global Configuration. Probably because I tried to set up Mandrill without the plug-in first.
I will contact my service provider now.
Thanks for all your help.

Hey Trudy,
Why are we talking about the SMTP configuration? Yes, you can use the mandrill service through SMTP, but what we develop is the Mandrill extension and plugin, which use the Mandrill API and not the SMTP.

Properly configuring the SMTP is just a backup in case we are unable to send through the API. Have you enabled the Mandrill plugin?

In your case it seems that something is broken with SMTP on your server, but if you use the Mandrill API you should not encounter those errors.
regards,
Daniel

Hello Daniel

Thanks for trying to help me out with this. I have sent a mass email using the Mass Mail Users function to 10 users only with mailer set as PHP and as SMTP and they both seem to have gone to the 10 users okay via Mandrill. However, I want to make sure that when I send to our 2000 members, that the email goes via SMTP.

Both the Contact form and the Registration form do not work if I have Mailer set to SMTP, but do when I have Mailer set to PHP. My mail settings in Global Configuration: Server are:
Mailer: PHP Mail or SMTP
From email: info@femaleconvicts.org.au
Fro Name: Female Convicts
Sendmail Path: /usr/sbinsendmail
SMTP Authentication: Yes
SMTP Security: None
SMTP Port 587
SMTP Username: info@femaleconvicts.org.au
SMTP Password: updated API key
SMTP Host: smpt.mandrillapp.com

Cheers, Trudy

If you do a mass mailing in the backend does it work when the cmandrill plugin is on? Is the problem only happening on the contact us form?

Regards,
Daniel

Hmmm ... I can't see anything in the API logs to indicate what the problem is. I sent a mass mail from the website to 10 users after changing the mailer to PHP and these are listed as being sent (though they don't show up in the dashboard graph) . Mind you, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for in the API logs as I am not that familiar with them, though there is nothing to indicate an error or a reason for an error.
I had to clear my browser (Google Chrome) cache when I upgraded the website (from Joomla 1.6.? to 2.5.16) to fix some other problems (mainly display issues with Joomla administrator) but I can't see how that would affect anything.
I"m stumped - I hope you have some more ideas ...

Trudy

Yes... Well then I have no idea.
Ah... The mails in your post are protected by the email cloaking plugin. When I read the email from the forum with your post it says:
"The following from address failed: /n this email is protected by ...".

I thought that this is the error from your site, but is actually coming from your site... Of course - turning the email cloaking thingy won't do anything. Can you login into mandrill and look at the API logs? I have the feeling that they will give you more information on the issue.

regards,
Daniel

Hi Daniel
I found a plug-in called Content - Email Cloaking and disabled it, but it made no difference. Was that the plugin you meant?
Trudy

That is really strange. Go to the plugin manager and disable the mail protect plugin. Test after this and let me know if it is working.