PHP mail() returns true but doesn't work

Posted on 16th Feb 2014 07:03 pm by admin

First off I apologize if this is a newbie question, and I generally don't like asking questions that have already been asked 1,000,000 times, but I've searched far and wide and cannot find a solution to my problem.

Basically I run an experimental server on my home network. I use LAMP (Ubuntu Server, Apache2.2, MySQL5, PHP5).

I simply want to take the data from an HTML form and submit it as an e-mail. I tried using the mail() function like this:
Code: $email = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$subject = $_POST['subject'];

$sentmail = mail("example@gmail.com",$subject,$message,"FROM: ".$email."rn");
if($sentmail) {
echo 'Your message has been sent!';
} else {
echo 'Cannot send message.';
}

After some googling, I found one solution that said to add this line:
Code: ini_set("sendmail_from", "example@gmail.com");but it made no difference.

I finally decided to try a different approach using SMTP:
Code: require_once "Mail.php";

$from = "Form Data <".$_POST['email'].">";
$to = "My Name <example@gmail.com>";
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$body = $_POST['message'];

$host = "ssl://smtp.gmail.com";
$port = "465";
$username = "foo@gmail.com";
$password = "bar";

$headers = array ('From' => $from,
'To' => $to,
'Subject' => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
array ('host' => $host,
'port' => $port,
'auth' => true,
'username' => $username,
'password' => $password));

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);

if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
echo("<p>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
} else {
echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
}

Still not working!

This is quite frustrating. It always returns a value of "true" but never actually sends the messages!

Maybe it would help if I had a better understanding of what the mail() function actually does. Where does the message go when handled by mail()? Mustn't it go through a mail server at some point? Port 25 is iffy on my setup, so that could be the issue with mail().

When using the PEAR method though, I specifically indicate port 465, so that can't be the issue.

What am I missing here?

Your Answer:

Login to answer

Other forums

Passing an array of values From VB6.0 to Oracle PL/SQL Function
Basically we are using VB6.0.

When we try to pass an array from VB6.0 to an Oracle PL/SQL

How to make a mail Form secure?
I want to create an email Form on my web site. How can I make the Form secure so the submitted info

CRM?
I think that's what they're called. Customer Management System? Anyway. Is there any good free ones

CHMOD script
Hi,

I need a script to read all files in a folder and set to 777.

Can anyone help out

Uploading/Downloading files stored in MySQL database
Hey all,

This problem just came up in my website and I'm having a hard time figuring out what

php mysql query from input textbox
Hi,

I have a text box, in that i have given the mysql query. I can able to get the query in v

Php WordPress help
I am writing the following code for making a plugin

<?php
header("Content-Type

Losing 'page' data
I have this code that allows me to update my database. But after updating, I lose the $_GET['page']

How to assign a textbox value to PHP variable??
Hi ! Can any one help me out as quickly as possible. As I m new to PHP.
Plz tell me how to assign

Working with popups and such in a class
I've recently started building my applications completely enclosed in classes. I like the fact that