Appname::Application.configure do 

config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
#typical smtp_settings for gmail account
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
  :address => "smtp.gmail.com",
  :port => 587,
  :domain => "domain.of.sender.net",
  :authentication => "plain"
  :user_name => "spencecooley"
  :password => "secret"
  :enable_starttls_auto => true
}

end

I have two questions about configuring action mailer

1. Do you know what the :domain symbol is referring to? Is it talking about the domain name of the application? Is it talking about the mail server domain? I saw baci.lindsaar.net written in on a few sites that I googled, but I don’t know why people are using that particular domain. List item
2. I also don’t know what the :enable_starttls_auto => true is doing

update:

Ok, so I found this in the docs in reference to question 2

:enable_starttls_auto – When set to true, detects if STARTTLS is enabled in your SMTP server and starts to use it

Didn’t know what STARTTLS was, so I looked it up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STARTTLS

update:
I found this in the docs, but still don’t understand

:domain – If you need to specify a HELO domain, you can do it here.

so I guess the new question is: what is a HELO domain? can’t seem to find a clear answer.