If you can’t send email messages from our server, you can do the following:
1. Make sure you have SMTP authentication enabled in your mail client. If you are using Outlook Express you can enable that via Tools -> Accounts -> Properties -> Servers tab -> My SMTP server requires authentication
2. Check if your ISP is blocking port 25
To do that click on Start, Run, enter cmd and hit enter, and then execute the following command:
telnet mail.yourdomain.com 25
If the port is blocked you will not see any output and finally get a connection timeout error. That means your ISP is blocking port 25 and you can’t connect to our SMTP server. In this case, you need to change the SMTP port to 26. You can do that in Outlook Express via Tools -> Accounts -> Properties -> Advanced -> change the SMTP port from 25 to 26, save and retry to send. If you still see problems after that see if your ISP is blocking port 26 as well with the following command:
telnet mail.yourdomain.com 26
If you don’t get any output and the connection times out then you need to check your firewall/gateway/modem settings and make sure it allows connections to port 25 and 26. If your firewall/gateway is setup to allow that you need to contact your ISP and ask them to unblock the ports or give you an alternative solution.
3. Make sure your domain points to the ScalaHosting server and nameservers. To find out where does your domain point to, run the following command from the same command prompt:
ping yourdomain.com
If you see the IP we provided in your welcome e-mail, then your domain points to our server. If it points to the IP of the old server that means there is a DNS cache on your computer or your ISP’s nameservers/resolvers. To flush the cache on your computer execute the following command:
ipconfig /flushdns
Once you flush the cache run the ping command again to see if your domain started resolving to our server’s IP.
ping yourdomain.com
If it still points to the old server’s IP you have 2 options. The first one is to wait for your ISP’s nameservers cache to expire. That may take from 2 to 12 hours or even more on a misconfigured nameserver/resolver. The second option is to call your ISP and have them clear the DNS cache for you so that your domain starts pointing to the correct IP from your computer. Do not forget to flush the cache on your computer once your ISP flushes the cache of their resolvers/nameservers.
