QA_EXTERNAL_EMAILER is deprecated?

Question

So, I was trying to follow the instructions at http://www.question2answer.org/qa/336/how-do-i-configure-mail to enable SMTP using google apps domain but when I opened qa-config.php to enable QA_EXTERNAL_EMAILER, I noticed the following comment.

"The constants QA_EXTERNAL_LANG and QA_EXTERNAL_EMAILER are deprecated from Q2A 1.5 since the same
effect can now be achieved in plugins by using function overrides."

Which plugin can I use to achieve this? How do I configure email to use SMTP via SSL auth.

Currently, I receive the following error.

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465 (Connection timed out) in /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-class.smtp.php on line 122

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-class.smtp.php:122) in /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-page.php on line 700

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-class.smtp.php:122) in /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-page.php on line 205

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-class.smtp.php:122) in /home/domain/public_html/qa-include/qa-page.php on line 329

Answer 1

First I recommend trying the built-in SMTP support in Q2A - see the 'emails' section of the admin panel.

Apart from that you can achieve the same result as QA_EXTERNAL_EMAILER by creating a plugin which overrides the function qa_send_email(...) from qa-app-emails.php.