send email from localhost to external email account - php

Question

if(mysql_affected_rows()==1)
{
$msg="To activate your account, please click on the following link:\n\n
http://localhost:80/activate.php?email=".urlencode($email)."&key=".$activation;
if(mail($email,"Registration Confirmation", $msg, "From: myemail#mycompany.com\r\nX-
Mailer: php"))
{
echo '<div> Thank you for registering. A confirmation email has been sent to '.
$email.'.Please click on the link to activate your account then</div>';
}
}
I use that code snippet to send an email from myemail#mycomapany.com to $email (myyahoo#yahoo.com) but I fail to receive any email in the yahoo account. I have got the echoed message displayed in the browser to indicate the successful mailing, though. Also, I have tried sending an email from myemail#mycomapany.com to the yahoo account directly via Outlook and it works fine. Would someone please help me fix that source snip or any kind of extra settings to make the mail function work ? Thank you so much.
EDIT: By the way, I also set up my php.ini's stmp script block as follows,
[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/smtp
SMTP = mail.mycompany.com
; http://php.net/smtp-port
smtp_port = 25
; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/sendmail-from
sendmail_from = postmaster#localhost
My problem is to set my local computer as a local mail server, and i editted php.ini as above but it still doesn't work.
[RESOLVED]
<?php
function SendMail($from, $to, $subject, $body)
{
require("class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host = "mail.mycompany.com";
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = "My name"; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = "mypassword"; // SMTP password = one used in Outlook
$mail->From = "myemail#mycompany.com";
$mail->FromName = "Registration Confirmation Email";
$mail->AddAddress($to);
$mail->IsHTML(true); // set email format to HTML
$mail->Subject = $subject;
$mail->Body = $body;
if(!$mail->Send())
{
echo "Message could not be sent. <p>";
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
return false;
}
return true;
}
?>
I include the above code snip to demonstrate a small but working example that uses phpmailer. Thanks to the one who introduces it to me in the post below.

Answer 1

Take a look at phpMailer it's good and very easy to use, and you can send email-s from your existing email accounts (like gmail)

Answer 2

Try this one, from this script you can also send email from your local file to external email.
require_once('class.phpmailer.php');
define('SMTPSERVER', 'mail.yourcompany.com');// sec. smtp server
define('SMTPUSER', 'info#yourcompanyname.com'); // sec. smtp username
define('SMTPPWD', '123456'); // sec. password
$useremail = 'mail#mail.com';
$msg = 'your text here';
$from = 'info#yourcompanyname.com';
$mailTest=new EmailService();
if ($mailTest->generalMailer($useremail, $from, 'Yoursite.com', 'Your company name', $msg)) {
} else {
if (!$mailTest->generalMailer($useremail, $from, 'Yoursite.com', 'Your company name', $msg)) {
if (!empty($error)) echo $error;
} else {
echo 'Yep, the message is send (after hard working)';
}
}
header("location:index.php?email_msg=Email sent successfully");

Answer 3

You should look into mail headers. Most of the time the reason is either:
Skipped Reply to/From headers
Skipped X-Mailer
For further details, please see here.
Edit
Ok, I think I know where the problem might be.
There is quite a big difference between LAMP and WAMP. Linux systems tend to have the sendmail library, which allows you to send mail to other systems without configuring anything. Windows does not.
Therefore, you should have an SMTP server installed, in order to send mail to outer sources. Take a look at this question for details.
Also, if you have a need to test this, you should take a look at Papercut, which is indispensable while testing your system.
If you can send a plain mail(), you should be able to send a mail from a library too. Not the opposite way around. Only exception is, if you use an already existing SMTP/IMAP server to do this, e.g. Gmail.

Answer 4

Are you sure that you have an MTA (Mail Transport Agent = Mailserver) installed on your local machine? Otherwise, you'll need to use your ISP's SMTP server instead.
Mostly that will be mail.yourprovider.com or smtp.yourprovider.com (the same hostname as what you use for outgoing mail in Outlook). PHP cannot mail by itself, it needs an MTA (either locally or remote) to do so.