Question

Trying to send an activation email for newly registered users, here’s the code so far:

$to = $email;
$subject = "Activate your account!";
$headers = "From: [e-mail]";    
$body = "..."

$mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

In the tutorial by phpacademy, the instructor used

ini_set("SMTP", $server);

I cannot figure out what to do. I think that my SMTP server should be my Yahoo account. How can I send the emails?

Answer 1

If you are going to sending email with PHP mail function you have to setup a SMTP server first in your PC. Other way, you can use a class to do this with out setting any thing in your PC. PHP mailer known to do this with few lines:
here is an example from the site of the project:

<?php

require("class.phpmailer.php");

$mail = new PHPMailer();

$mail->IsSMTP();  // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->Host     = "smtp.example.com"; // SMTP server

$mail->From     = "[e-mail]";
$mail->AddAddress("[e-mail]");

$mail->Subject  = "First PHPMailer Message";
$mail->Body     = "Hi! \n\n This is my first e-mail sent through PHPMailer.";
$mail->WordWrap = 50;

if(!$mail->Send()) {
  echo 'Message was not sent.';
  echo 'Mailer error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
  echo 'Message has been sent.';
}
?> 

Official web site: http://phpmailer.worxware.com