php simple contact form not sending mail even after confirmation - php

Question

I have been trying to get a php contact form working on my portfolio site (currently on a free megabyet.net account), but on testing it(on the uploaded site) even though i get the thankyou/confirmation message, I still don't receive any message on my mail account (specified in the code), I can't seem to understand the problem here....help needed!
can it be something related to SMTP??
Here's the code :
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
$to = "vishu_unlocker#yahoo.com";
$subject = "Portfolio Contact";
$name_field = $_POST['name'];
$email_field = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$headers = "From: $email_field";
$body = "From: $name_field\n E-Mail: $email_field\n Message:\n $message";
echo "Mail has been sent, thankyou!";
mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);
} else {
echo "blarg!";
}
?>
HTML Code:
<form id="contact_frm" action="mail.php" method="POST">
<h4>Name :</h4>
<input type="text" id="f_name" name="name"/><br/><br/>
<h4>E-Mail Address :</h4>
<input type="text" id="f_email" name="email"/><br/><br/>
<h4>Message :</h4>
<textarea id="f_msg" name="message" cols="22" rows="5"/></textarea><br/><br/>
<input id="send_btn" type="submit" value="Send >>" name="submit" /><br/>
</form>

Answer 1

Firstly you should be checking if mail() returns true or not to determine if mail has been sent successfully:
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
$to = "vishu_unlocker#yahoo.com";
$subject = "Portfolio Contact";
$name_field = $_POST['name'];
$email_field = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$headers = "From: $email_field";
$body = "From: $name_field\n E-Mail: $email_field\n Message:\n $message";
$success = mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);
if ($success) {
echo "Mail has been sent, thankyou!";
// redirect to thank you page here
}
else {
echo "message failed";
}
} else {
echo "blarg!";
}
?>
Try that and let us know if that works.
Also, have you tried sending to a different email address? It may be that Yahoo is blocking that web host for spam. Being a free host it is a very likely scenario.

Answer 2

If you are looking for something related to sending email via SMTP. I would recommend you use Code Igniters mailer class.
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/email.html
This also allows for debugging and handling SMTP errors gracefully.

Answer 3

can it be something related to SMTP??
Probably. Why don't you check your mailq and the log files from your MTA?

Answer 4

#John .. checked with that if condition with the code below and i get a failed output =/ ...so my mail() function is returning false =( ...and yea i've tried gmail but with the mail function not running fine on the first place.... it doesn't work...
<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {
$to = "vishu_unlocker#yahoo.com";
$subject = "Portfolio Contact";
$name_field = $_POST['name'];
$email_field = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$headers = "From: $email_field";
$body = "From: $name_field\n E-Mail: $email_field\n Message:\n $message";
$success = mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);
if($success) {
echo "Mail has been sent, thankyou!";
} else {
echo "message sending failed!";
}
} else {
echo "blarg!";
}
?>
output- message sending failed!
so, do I need to define some extra params here?...also i saw that my host has given the path to sendmail as -- /usr/sbin/sendmail does it has anything to do with my mail function acting bad?...i mean do I need to define the sendmail param in it?
#unknown- hmm codeigniter may help, but i've never used it before...let's see...
#symcbean- sorry i don't know how to do that :P...probabaly cuz i'm not very well versed with SMTP yet?.... still a learner/beginner...

Answer 5

If the E-Mail goes out correctly, but never arrives, it could be that it gets caught by a spam filter. A few bullet points I wrote in reply to an similar question a few months ago:
Does the sender address ("From") belong to a domain on your server? If not, make it so.
Is your server on a blacklist (e.g. check IP on spamhaus.org)? This is a remote possibility with shared hosting.
Are mails filtered by a spam filter? Open an account with a freemailer that has a spam folder and find out. Also, try sending mail to an address without a spam filter.
Do you possibly need the fifth parameter "-f" of mail() to add a sender address? (See mail() command in the PHP manual)
If you have access to log files, check those, of course, as suggested above.
Do you check the "from:" address for possible bounce mails ("Returned to sender")? You can also set up a separate "errors-to" address.