setting up email routing to gmail/google apps via ispconfig

[ichpen]

Hi all,

I have a pretty clean ispconfig 3 installation running on ubuntu 11.10.

Have a bit of a problem though. Basically, I've setup a google apps email account to handle all of my domain email. All mx records have been pointed correctly and it works well.

I run a cart on this domain. The problem comes with emails/contact forms within the cart. I try to steer clear of SMTP settings in forms because invariably most cannot be made to work with google apps easily and some only use php Mail.

Problem is when a user submits a form, phpmail does not seem to do an mx lookup, instead it seems to try to find the mailbox locally. If I setup a standard postfix mailbox I get all the emails. If I remove the mailbox, emails submitted through forms are lost.

Is there any way I can setup an smtp transport/relay on the server side to forward say all domain email to google apps/gmail say via email routing (haven't looked into how that works) whilst still preserving/utilizing native postfix mail functionality.

[ichpen]

OK, just answered this for myself. Tried a straightforward relay to google's mail servers and seems to work

[ichpen]

More of an update to myself

I'm not quite sure how the advanced email routing functionality works. I added one google mail server and it delivers instantaneously (from a php mail form). When I added all other 5 servers as per google apps instructions, email took a really long time to relay (10 mins or so), so it seems the relays don't quite work the same as domain mx records (I had set different values under sort). Still curious as to how it hangs together and if I'm able to add additional smtp google mail server relays (for backup purposes).