If your Joomla! site has issues in connecting to your SMTP mail server, it is possible to get a detailed log of all the messages exchanged between your Joomla site and the SMTP server.  Inspecting this low level transaction log allows you to see what is going wrong between the two servers and then get your IT department or hosting provider to resolve any connectivity issues. 

Go to Extensions - Plugins and configure the system plugin 'System - Debug' with the following settings:

  • Allowed Groups: Super Users
  • Log Priorities:  All
  • Log Categories: mail
  • Log Almost Everything

 

20180425 system debug plugin 20180425 system debug logging

 

Go to Global Configuration and turn on the debug option in the System tab - Debug Settings - Debug System.  

20180425 debug settings

 

Go to the Server tab - Mail Settings and click the button Send Test Mail. 

20180425 mail settings

 

The test result, success or failure, will then get displayed as a system message, but you can download the detailed log file 'everything.php' from the Joomla log folder, usually administrator/logs, or, if your site was installed much earlier, from the /logs folder in the main Joomla folder.

20180425 everything example

 And this is the email we would like to receive from the website:

20180415 test mail

More about logging from the Joomla! Documentation at https://docs.joomla.org/Using_JLog