How to set up an iCloud custom email domain in myBB

It's not very intuitive, honestly

After I successfully installed myBB, with great help from James Martin (check him out), I was quickly faced with another obstacle: sending emails.

When users registed for the forum, they’re supposed to get an email with instructions about activating their account. The default PHP mail implementation didn’t work, so I had to set up SMTP.

Unfortunately, there’s no documentation on how to do this for custom email domains that you get with iCloud. Until now.

Prerequisites

1. A custom email domain set up, and at least one email address created for it

2. An app-specific password

How to

1. Log into your Admin control panel in myBB

2. Go to Configuration, then scroll down to Mail Settings

3. Fill out the fields as such:

   1. Mail handler: SMTP mail

   2. SMTP hostname: smtp.mail.me.com

   3. SMTP port: 587

   4. SMTP username: Your full iCloud email (name@icloud.com)

   5. SMTP pasword: The app-specific password you generated

   6. SMTP encryption mode: TLS encryption

Now, myBB will be able to send emails through your custom domain.

Notes

You might have noticed that we never specified the actual custom email domain. What gives?

You actually set the custom email domain during the installation of myBB itself. It’s an option like “system email“, or something similar; I don’t remember the exact name for that field.