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

PHP, Arrays & A Lot Of Confusion
I've been doing basic PHP work on sites for a few years now, but I've never been tempted to learn ho

I got my hosting suspended XD
So I saw this challenge a day or so ago

http://www.programming-challenges.com/pg.php?page=dow

Access website from only 1 computer...?
One of my customers wants his website to only be accessed by people in which they bought the website

form problem
Hi all, I think this is going to be easy to resolve but for I have been looking at it to long and I

Specific name typed, specific image shown on html page
Hello,

Fairly new to PHP and was curious if someone might know how to solve a fairly simple r

using file_get_contents??
okay how would i create a script using file_get_contents() in php have it grab search pages 1-20 and

Help with Password Encoding/Decoding?
Trying to design a "change password" tool. On my signup code I'm using base64_encode, now

Got A Free Server :(
So I was given a free server

http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Compaq%20ProLiant%201500%20Server:1

Running External Scripts
I am very new to PHP and am not even sure what I'm asking is possible. I have just installed mediaW

Pop-up Banner
Hello Friends,I need to use banner in our client site.Example: www.example.com if i enter this site