So I spent like, what feels like 10 months, trying to find out why my phpBB is not sending email s to users that sign up. Google is full of threads about it and there are a lot of suggestions that claim increasing php timeout limits helped them but not others.

The errors in the log were the like of:

[Mon Sep 21 22:03:04.582433 2015] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 3784:tid 140278170044160] [client xx.xx.xx:xx] AH01067: Failed to read FastCGI header, referer: /adm/index.php?i=users&mode=overview&u=1763

[Mon Sep 21 22:03:04.582477 2015] [proxy_fcgi:error] [pid 3784:tid 140278170044160] (104)Connection reset by peer: [client xx.xx.xx:xx] AH01075: Error dispatching request to : , referer: /adm/index.php?i=users&mode=overview&u=1763

Turns out, the simple thing that was missing is the protocol prefix for the SMTP server in the ACP config.

So instead of

your.mailserver.com

you actually have to pay attention to which protocol you are using and put it in like this

ssl://your.mailserver.com

replacing ssl with whatever you are using.

I only figured this out by looking at the examples for using Gmail to send mails, the normal FAQ entry at https://wiki.phpbb.com/Support/Email_Troubleshooting does not even mention it.

So what is this issue about?

=> I would love to get a text hint inside the ACP next to that box that tells users that they have to pay attention about the protocol that they are using, optionally an error if the user does not enter any protocol at all, like I did.

Also would love to get this mentioned in the FAQ, I believe there are many people out there with this problem, not knowing how to solve it.