SSL SMTP mail on Windows Apache and PHP via Wordpress not working

Question

I cannot seem to send an SMTP email (tried multiple plugins as I know the PHP Mail() is severely limited) via my wordpress UNLESS I send using a NON-SSL SMTP connection like GoDaddy supports. I have tried using Google Apps AND Amazon's AWS SES email service, and it always fails with a message similar to "could not connect to SMTP". I have tried the same SMTP configurations on third party email apps (as well as one that I built myself) and they work, so I do not believe it to be a simple case of using the incorrect SMTP info.

My WAMP setup was NOT a prebuilt kit, but instead combined & configured from the individual components.

I believe there may be a configuration setting that needs to be changed when using a Windows based Apache/PHP setup from scratch in order to send SMTP mail. Again, I would suspect it was simply due to a wordpress plugin problem, but after trying at least 4-5 different plugins, I am starting to believe it to be within the configuration settings.

System current is running:
Windows 2008 R2
Apache 2.4.6 (x64 using VC11)
PHP 5.5.3 (ThreadSafe - x64 using VC11)
Wordpress 3.8.3

I am willing to find and paste in any settings or info that may be helpful in deciphering this problem.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

Answer 1

It seems that as almost every smtp email plugin in WP used PHPMailer....and since those plugins worked when sending unencrpyted SMTP transactions for emails, the problem was that in the PHP.ini file, the OpenSSL module was commented out. So I removed the comment, saved the PHP.ini, and restarted the Apache service for good measure and it worked.

I mistakenly though all OpenSSL support was enabled, but it turns out I only had the Apache OpenSSL module enabled...and using cURL in PHP must not rely on OpenSSL...as that was communicating with HTTPS sites.

For reference, the PHP.INI module was listed as: extension=php_openssl.dll