Gmail blocks my contact form mail sending attempt

Question

I have added contact form for my Joomla 3.4.5 web site's contact page. All my mail settings in Configuration Manager are correct... But after submitting the message as a test intention, I get e-mail from Gmail that says

it has blocked a sign-in attempt by an application which does not complies with modern security standards

As a result, I get

SMTP connect() failed.

SMTP connect() failed.

My configuration.php file contains those lines in the following:

...
public $mailonline = '1';
public $mailer = 'smtp';
public $mailfrom = 'my_gmail_account@gmail.com';
public $fromname = 'FROM NAME';
public $sendmail = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
public $smtpauth = '1';
public $smtpuser = 'my_gmail_account@gmail.com';
public $smtppass = 'my_gmail_account_password';
public $smtphost = 'smtp.gmail.com';
public $smtpsecure = 'ssl';
public $smtpport = '465';
...

PS: Authentication Gmail Plug-in is enabled.

Answer 1

This issue is because Google have locked down their email system and require's apps to be authenticated first. With Joomla! this isn't possible at present, so you need to enable the 'less' secure option on your gmail account. See:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en

Once done, set SMTP Security to TLS and Port to: 25 with Authentication enabled. Note, these can be configured in the Joomla! Global configuration. No need to edit a file.

Many thanks Tony