phpmailer, email behavior mystery - php

Question

I have been in PHP/email 'hell' - I got close, and can't seem to get to the 'finish line'....
Om using phpmailer to send support requests in a clients site. my process looks like this:
FORM -> PROCESS (generate feedback message AND cc message to support) -> mail to sender -> mail to support -> redirect to thank you page.
the issue is two fold:
1) the emails go thru as expected IF i have debuging turned on, but I get the debug AND no redirect
2) if I turn off debug - the email DOES NOT go out AND I get a blank page - with NO redirect
* addendum *
The emails just came thru - so it's ONLY a redirect problem... either with or without debug, My meta refresh does not get sent - maybe there's a better way????
PHP FORM PROCESSOR
...
// send two emails
$_emailTo = $email; // the email of the person requesting
$_emailBody = $text_body; // the stock response with things filled in
include ( 'email.php' );
$_emailTo = $notifyEmail; // the support email address
$_emailBody = $pretext.$text_body; // pretext added as meta data for support w/ same txt sent to user
include ( 'email.php' );
// relocate
echo '<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" Content="0; URL=success.php" >';
exit;
PHP MAILER (email.php)
<?php
require 'phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php';
//Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer();
//Tell PHPMailer to use SMTP
$mail->IsSMTP();
//Enable SMTP debugging
// 0 = off (for production use)
// 1 = client messages
// 2 = client and server messages
$mail->SMTPDebug = 0;
//Set the hostname of the mail server
$mail->Host = "mail.validmailserver.com";
//Set the SMTP port number - likely to be 25, 465 or 587
$mail->Port = 26;
//Whether to use SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
//Username to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = "validusername";
//Password to use for SMTP authentication
$mail->Password = "pass1234";
//Set who the message is to be sent from
$mail->SetFrom('me#validmailserver.com', 'no-reply # this domain');
//Set an alternative reply-to address
//$mail->AddReplyTo('no-reply#validmailserver.com','Support');
//Set who the message is to be sent to
$mail->AddAddress( $_emailTo );
$mail->Subject = $_emailSubject;
$mail->MsgHTML( $_emailBody );
$_emailError = false;
//Send the message, check for errors
if( !$mail -> Send() ) {
$_emailError = true;
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
?>
help - please

Answer 1

Your problem may be that some output has already been sent to the browser before the redirect is attempted. You can't normally do a redirect in that situation. If that's the case you may be able to use output buffering as in the following example:
ob_start();
//statements that output data to the browser
print "some text";
if (!headers_sent()) {
header('Location: /success.php');
exit;
}
ob_end_flush();
This can also be turned on by default in the php.ini file with the output buffering directive, in which case you won't need the ob_start() and ob_end_flush() statements. My php.ini file has this:
output_buffering = 4096