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

How to add an image/C++ OpenGL?
Hi,

I have been trying to look online for this and, so far, I haven't found anything usef

Multiple Do / While Statements?
I'm still very new to PHP, and running in to a problem when trying to execute a do/while loop inside

want to add a break after a certain amount of characters
i was wondering how to add a break in a blog post after a certain amount of characters... any idea o

Beginner PHP code help
Hi I'm new to php but if someone could please read the question below and help it would be great.

DB2 for z/OS, LUW, iSeries
Hello, In this forum a lot of threads related to other members of the DB2 family than DB2 for z/OS

opening a window with after form submission
I know this this forum has nothing to do with JS, but i'm trying to use it with my php script.
<

PHP Multiples of 2, Show posts...not working (wordpress)
I have been using this code to show div.example with 6 li columns inside it, each li is a post with

update sql when refresh - php
hi
I have made a table (attachement)

the users can update the sql database using + or x bu

Give me all your tricks for minimizing jar file size

Hi, I'm coming close to releasing my J2ME game... I am kicking up against the 64k size barrier w

Php Mysql Page Loading Notice
Hi all,

I was wondering if there is a way (Sure there is) of showing a message or an image wh