Question

Hi i am currently implementing an email system for a customer in php. I’m having a bit of trouble in figuring out something. Here’s a sample code:

   $mail = new PHPMailer();  // create a new object
   $mail->IsSMTP(); // enable SMTP
   $mail->SMTPDebug = 0;  // debugging: 1 = errors and messages, 2 = messages only
   $mail->SMTPAuth = true;  // authentication enabled
   $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; // secure transfer enabled REQUIRED for Gmail
   $mail->Host = 'smtp.gmail.com';
   $mail->Port = 465;
   $mail->Username = "***missing part***";
   $mail->Password = "***missing part***";
   $mail->SetFrom($from, $from_name);
   $mail->Subject = $subject;
   $mail->Body = $body;
   $mail->AddAddress($to);

My customer already created a business email account on gmail for this website. My question is should i put this business email and password in these missing parts? Anyone could help me please? Thanks.

Answer 1

whose username and password should i put there?

If you want to use GMail, you need to put in the username and password that belong to the GMail account you want to send the message from.

…. which is why sending E-Mail through GMail is a bit of an imperfect solution IMO – you put your personal Google login data, with which you can access everything you do on Google, into a script on a server. It’s not great practice security-wise.

It might be more feasible to create a SMTP account on the client’s web site, and use that. That has the additional advantage that you can use a [e-mail] sender address.