E-mail not getting sent in Joomla in combo with VM - php

Question

I'm new to SO, so bear with me please. I'm fairly noobish regarding code, I'm mostly a webdesigner, not developer. But my own webdeveloper is having a hard time with this problem so I'm trying to find some help where ever I can get.
So, we got this problem on a Virtuemart shop, running version 2.5.23 of Joomla with VM 2.6.10.
Server info:
PHP Built On Linux web04 3.13.0-35-generic #62~precise1-Ubuntu
Database Version: 5.1.73-0ubuntu0.10.04.1-log
Database Collation: utf8_general_ci
PHP Version: 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.14
Web Server: Apache
WebServer to PHP Interface: apache2handler
Joomla! Version: Joomla! 2.5.23 Stable [ Ember ] 24-July-2014 14:00 GMT
So this is not sending mail anywhere. We got it on a testserver and over there, life is good. It's sending e-mail. The testserver is running PHP 5.24.
I've used this to see if this checks out:
<?php
$to = "dontsentmemail#gmail.com";
if( mail( $to , 'This is a test message.' , 'Is this working?' ) ) {
echo 'Email sent.';
} else {
echo 'Email failed to send.';
}
?>
This is working fine. And I'm about to pull out all my hair. We've tried SMTP mail handling, and again, working like a charm on the testserver but it won't work on the live site.
does anybody know if is VM/joomla is using mail() directly or maybe using JUtility::sendMail() as default, and if we can change that, to make it work? Anyone got any ideas?

Answer 1

EDIT
I wasn't aware Joomla already includes its own version of PHPMailer. See Lodder's answer for a better out-of-the-box solution!
Try switching to a specialist mail library, e.g. PHPMailer to send the mail, instead of php's mail function.
I too had a similar problem, emails sent but not delivered, and no bounce messages. PHPMailer managed to send email that also got delivered.
<?php
require_once('path/to/PHPMailerAutoload.php');
//Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer();
// Set PHPMailer to use the sendmail transport
$mail->isSendmail();
// Set who the message is to be sent from
// Name is optional
$mail->setFrom('somebody#yourdomain.com', 'Joe Bloggs');
//Set who the message is to be sent to
// Name is optional
$mail->addAddress('dontsentmemail#gmail.com', 'Jane Bliggs');
//Set the subject line
$mail->Subject = 'Is this working?';
// Set plain text body
$mail->IsHTML(false);
$mail->Body = 'This is a test message.';
//send the message, check for errors
if (!$mail->send()) {
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}

Answer 2

I would personally use Joomla's built-in JMail class which uses PHPMailer. Have a look at the following:
$mailer = JFactory::getMailer();
$mailer->setSender('dontsentmemail#gmail.com');
$mailer->addRecipient('from#emailaddress.com');
$mailer->setSubject('Your subject');
$body = "Some email text";
$mailer->setBody($body);
$send = $mailer->Send();
if ( $send !== true )
{
echo 'Error sending email';
}
else
{
echo 'Mail sent';
}
You may want to change from#emailaddress.com to whatever suits your needs. There are also some additional features for this class which can be found on the Joomla documentation:
http://docs.joomla.org/Sending_email_from_extensions
Update:
I wasn't aware that you were using a separate PHP file. At the top of your PHP file, you will need to import the Joomla framework like so:
define( '_JEXEC', 1 );
define('JPATH_BASE', __DIR__);
require_once ( JPATH_BASE .'/includes/defines.php' );
require_once ( JPATH_BASE .'/includes/framework.php' );
$app = JFactory::getApplication('site');
You may need to change the value for JPATH_BASE so that your script points to the root of your Joomla site, relative to where you PHP file is located.
Hope this helps