How to setup php on webhost without php.ini file - php

Question

I'm close to finishing my first real website, this website uses php mail function to send mail from my website. My script works because I'm running mercury which routes the mail through gmail smtp. Now my question is if someone can tell me how to connect to this smtp server from php because my webhost doesn't allow me acces to the php.ini file.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

This PHP class will do it for you. Most real webapps don't rely on PHP's mail(), they use this class instead (or swiftmailer, but his one's much easier).
PHPMailer
Sample code (from the linked page)
require 'PHPMailerAutoload.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer;
//$mail->SMTPDebug = 3; // Enable verbose debug output
$mail->isSMTP(); // Set mailer to use SMTP
$mail->Host = 'smtp1.example.com;smtp2.example.com'; // Specify main and backup SMTP servers
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // Enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = 'user#example.com'; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = 'secret'; // SMTP password
$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // Enable TLS encryption, `ssl` also accepted
$mail->Port = 587; // TCP port to connect to
$mail->From = 'from#example.com';
$mail->FromName = 'Mailer';
$mail->addAddress('joe#example.net', 'Joe User'); // Add a recipient
$mail->addAddress('ellen#example.com'); // Name is optional
$mail->addReplyTo('info#example.com', 'Information');
$mail->addCC('cc#example.com');
$mail->addBCC('bcc#example.com');
$mail->addAttachment('/var/tmp/file.tar.gz'); // Add attachments
$mail->addAttachment('/tmp/image.jpg', 'new.jpg'); // Optional name
$mail->isHTML(true); // Set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = 'Here is the subject';
$mail->Body = 'This is the HTML message body <b>in bold!</b>';
$mail->AltBody = 'This is the body in plain text for non-HTML mail clients';
if(!$mail->send()) {
echo 'Message could not be sent.';
echo 'Mailer Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo 'Message has been sent';
}