[php] smtp configuration for php mail

I am sending mails from my website by using php mail function. But now it is not working and I contacted our hosting team then they told me to use smtp as they did some changes in server. I don't know how to do it. Current code (with php mail function) is as follows, can anyone help me about the changes which I have to do with this.

<?php
$mail_To="[email protected]";
$headers = "";
$headers .= "From: [email protected]\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: [email protected]\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: php";
$mail_Subject = " Live TV key";
$mail_Body = "<p>Muscle-tube</p>";
mail($mail_To, $mail_Subject, $mail_Body,$headers);
?>

But now it is not working and I contacted our hosting team then they told me to use smtp

Newsflash - it was using SMTP before. They've not provided you with the information you need to solve the problem - or you've not relayed it accurately here.

Its possible that they've disabled the local MTA on the webserver, in which case you'll need to connect the SMTP port on a remote machine. There are lots of toolkits which will do the heavy lifting for you. Personally I like phpmailer because it adds other functionality.

Certainly if they've taken away a facility which was there before and your paying for a service then your provider should be giving you better support than that (there are also lots of programs to drop in in place of a full MTA which would do the job).

C.

Since some of the answers give here relate to setting up SMTP in general (and not just for @shinod particular issue where it had been working and stopped), I thought it would be helpful if I updated the answer because this is a lot simpler to do now than it used to be :-)

In PHP 4 the PEAR Mail package is typically already installed, and this really simple tutorial shows you the few lines of code that you need to add to your php file http://email.about.com/od/emailprogrammingtips/qt/PHP_Email_SMTP_Authentication.htm

Most hosting companies list the SMTP settings that you'll need. I use JustHost, and they list theirs at https://my.justhost.com/cgi/help/26 (under Outgoing Mail Server)

php's email() function hands the email over to a underlying mail transfer agent which is usually postfix on linux systems

so the preferred method on linux is to configure your postfix to use a relayhost, which is done by a line of

relayhost = smtp.example.com

in /etc/postfix/main.cf

however in the OP's scenario I somehow suspect that it's a job that his hosting team should have done

PHP's mail() function does not have support for SMTP. You're going to need to use something like the PEAR Mail package.

Here is a sample SMTP mail script:

<?php
require_once("Mail.php");

$from = "Your Name <[email protected]>";
$to = "Their Name <[email protected]>";
$subject = "Subject";
$body = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit...";

$host = "mailserver.blahblah.com";
$username = "smtp_username";
$password = "smtp_password";

$headers = array('From' => $from, 'To' => $to, 'Subject' => $subject);

$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp', array ('host' => $host,
                                     'auth' => true,
                                     'username' => $username,
                                     'password' => $password));

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

if ( PEAR::isError($mail) ) {
    echo("<p>Error sending mail:<br/>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
} else {
    echo("<p>Message sent.</p>");
}
?>

Note that PHP mail settings come from your php.ini file. The default looks more or less like this:

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/smtp
SMTP = localhost
; http://php.net/smtp-port
smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/sendmail-from
;sendmail_from = [email protected]

; For Unix only.  You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
; http://php.net/sendmail-path
;sendmail_path =

; Force the addition of the specified parameters to be passed as extra parameters
; to the sendmail binary. These parameters will always replace the value of
; the 5th parameter to mail(), even in safe mode.
;mail.force_extra_parameters =

; Add X-PHP-Originating-Script: that will include uid of the script followed by the filename
mail.add_x_header = On

; Log all mail() calls including the full path of the script, line #, to address and headers
;mail.log =

By editing your php.ini file you should be able to fix the problem without changing your PHP scripts. Also, you can test a connection with the telnet tool and the HELO, MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, DATA, QUIT commands if you directly connect to an SMTP server. With sendmail, you don't even need that, sendmail should know what it's doing (although in your case it probably wasn't and the sendmail settings probably needed a little help.)

Update: in most cases, telnet is not installed anymore because it's considered dangerous (i.e. it gives you a clear text connection which is generally fine on your local network, but not so much to remote computers). Instead, we have nc which is very similar for testing things such as SMTP but doesn't really allow for remote shell connections. That being said, more and more SMTP is going to use encryption as well so the best tool to test is still sendmail.