Hi I am running MAMP on my mac to locally host a website. I want to send an email using php scripts. The stuff i looked online tells me about php scripts for emails but i am unable to send emails. I am guessing this has to do with MAMP settings or maybe i have to make changes to php.ini file but i cant find information regarding that. Can i send emails to my clients using my gmail address running php scripts. I am creating a signup page where once you signup successfully, the site sents you a welcome email. Can some body please guide me how to do this. I have used code from here:
http://email.about.com/od/emailprogrammingtips/qt/PHP_Email_SMTP_Authentication.htm
but this doesnt work.
i have used following settings:
$host = "ssl://smtp.gmail.com";
$port = "465";
MAMP is just Apache, MySQL and PHP and doesn't include a mail server. You could use postfix or, as you said, an external SMTP server.
If using Gmail make sure your account is setup to allow SMTP connections (it's off by default). This can be found somewhere in Settings in the web client. I'd recommend you test it with Mail or another mail client on your local machine to make sure Gmail is working as expected.
Finally (once the above is set up) SwiftMailer or PHPMailer are good mail libraries which can connect to remote SMTP servers. It'll save you a lot of headaches writing your own code, especially when it comes to file attachments and such.
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I am really confused on where to start with sending emails. I have search the web but the amount of content available for different packages and softwares has really confused me. I was wondering if anyone here had a simple or knows of a simple tutorial of how i can send an email using xampp.
Im new to using local host and so far have only used MySQL and Apache from xampp to load and view my php files for an application.
I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me start setting up XAMPP to send emails when i use the php.
Some sites suggest a separate server is needed for emails such as PHPMailer while others suggest a few config changes need making like changing in the php.ini files which I'm very cautious to change incase my whole xampp crashes!
is this link any good? http://www.websnippetz.com/2013/01/send-email-from-xampp-localhost.html
Many are using SendMail package with XAMPP but i can't find a download for that.
anyone tried anything which worked for them?
please help a very confused developer guys!
Some sites suggest a separate server is needed for emails such as PHPMailer while others suggest a few config changes need making like changing in the php.ini files which I'm very cautious to change incase my whole xampp crashes!
PHPMailer is not a server it is a library. People often recommend using a Mail library because the built mail functions are very low level and hard to work with. Because they are modeled after using sendmail from the commandline.
If you want to send via SMTP, use attachments, or other things it can be difficult or impossible to do with mail() directly.
Personally I recommend using SwiftMail over PHP mailer. IMO, it's more modern, easier to use, and has a better API, and depending on which PHP F/OSS projects you are used to using or contributing to its more common and the standard.
Overall there are 2 parts to sending mail from PHP:
Setup of the actual mail server on a system (local or otherwise)
The configuration of PHP to use that mail server.
To setup the mail function you need to install and configure a mail server locally in order to fulfill item (1). This should already be included and set up on OSX. So to fulfill item (2) you need to configure PHP via the INI to use that mail server by changing the sendmail_path.
Now if you want to use a library, which I recommend you need to get that source into your project and then use it appropriately. For the example we will use SwiftMailer, with SMTP transport via a gmail account:
require_once 'PATH/TO/swift_required.php';
// Create the Transport
$transport = Swift_SmtpTransport::newInstance('smtp.googlemail.com', 465, 'ssl')
->setUsername('user#gmail.com')
->setPassword('secret');
$mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport);
$message = Swift_Message::newInstance('My SMTP Message')
->setFrom(array('john#doe.com' => 'John Doe'))
->setTo(array('receipient#domain.com', 'other#domain.com' => 'A name'))
->setBody('Plain Text Message Body');
$mailer->send($message);
To send emails from your localhost your need an Email-Server like postfix or Exim or you send your E-Mails over SMTP what is described on that site from your link.
The easiest way is to use an abstraction layer like Swift Mailer
http://swiftmailer.org/docs/sending.html
Here you have a lot of possibilities to send E-Mails. Another solution is to install a local Mailserver and fetch all sending E-Mails. In MAMP Pro for example you have an integrated Mailserver.
http://blog-en.mamp.info/2009/09/how-to-sending-emails-with-mamp-pro.html
This is probably a stupid question but I can't seem to find an answer anywhere. I have made a PHP mail script on localhost and I need to test it, all the emails are being forwarded to the 'xampp/mailoutput' file and I can view them as .txt files. Does this mean that my script is working fine? Or do I need to set up a tool such as 'TestMailServerTool' to test properly.
Yup If you're getting mail output that means php is sending emails successfully.
If you want to get proper email functionality you have to setup an SMTP server in your Windows System. You can also use other SMTP servers like gmail, yahoo or use one which is provided to you by your ISP or your Web Hosting providers.
I have a contact page that I made following this tutorial, when I click send I get a message telling me that the message has been sent, but I ain't receiving any email, I'm trying to test it locally with xampp v3.1.0, I read that I have to change the smtp in php.ini, but it didn't work either.
I want to test it with my localhost, what do I have to do?
As can be seen in the link "Mail" in XAMPP homepage (i.e. "localhost"), with the default configurations of the XAMPP, mails sent by the php mail function can be found in ".../xampp/mailoutput" folder (Windows). This is useful for test purposes.
Maybe your change to the "php.ini"s SMTP directive can be a problem to this approach.
You often don't have mail capability from your local server unless you specifically set it up that way. If you want to be able to send mail locally, refer to this link. Of course, there are other ways, such as installing hMailServer or some other smtp server, but you should have sendmail as part of your Xampp installation.
I'm building a site on my home computer using MAMP. The code I'm using employs the PHP mail() function to send emails, but whenever I test it, the mails aren't getting sent.
My computer is connected to the net, but I'm wondering if there's something about local hosting that prevents mails from getting sent. I'm not getting any kind of error message.
Any ideas?
PHP can send mail in one of two ways.
The first, and the default on non-Windows systems, is to use the local mail transfer agent installed on the system. This would be "sendmail" or an application compatible with it, the most popular probably being postfix.
The other is to connect via SMTP to some mail server.
You will either need to install a mail transfer agent on your local system (and set it up correctly), or edit PHP's configuration to specify an SMTP server address and port.
Yes, there are things that could block locally hosted mail. For one, your ISP could block SMTP to servers other than the ISP. ask your ISP support if they block SMTP... Or try telexing so someone's MX port 25 and do you get a response?
If your ISP blocks smtp you can still send the mail, but first you must relay that email through a hosted email server like your ISP mail server. This process is called 'smart hosting' and you can search for more info.
Even if you are not blocked on port 25, many sites will refuse or lose smtp traffic that originates from a dynamic or residential IP address, so again the smart host suggestion.
Also I suggest not using the built in mail() function in PHP... Use something that replaces and improves it like http://pear.php.net/package/Mail or http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/. Again, use the SMTP method as it is way more reliable than direct sending or calling Sendmail.
It is important to confirm this problem, doing SMTP manually over telnet. That way you isolate the problem from PHP. I did ISP support for years and saw this question lots. Most people setup php and mail correctly but get stuck on a background network issue with SMTP.
If you have Wireshark installed, it can record network traffic and you might see the actual SMTP traffic, for example the remote server may be refusing your connection. Wireshark is helpful but not required to solve this though. Good luck.
You need to setup SMTP server in order to be able use mail function, or you can use PHPMailer class, with it you can avoid using mail function and setup problems, PHPMailler need socket extension to be loaded in order to function correctly.
I am using php's mail() function to send an email from a php scrpit, however, this is not working. I believe the problem is with my php setup and the lack of an smtp server. Does anyone have experience with setting something like this up on a local machine and what can be done to fix this? Thank you
Yes I have on Windows machine. You should install local mail server, for example ArGoSoft Mail Server (www.argosoft.com). It's free, small and simple. Then setup a local domain in settings (for example weblocal.dom), then add a mail user (for example admin). So your test email will be admin#weblocal.dom. Then you just add this mail account to your email client program and send some mail to it from PHP script.