Optimizing this php code

[Anon]

Hello,
I have a form and php script for processing giveaways in my site. I ask for Name, email, phone, city, age, sex and 5 email address of friends to refer to the site (this last one is optional). The collected data is saved on a text file (CSV) and the emails for refer are sent in the same moment. The script takes about 5 to 10 seconds to execute I think is due to the mail() used for sending the emails to the friends. I was wondering if there is a way to optimize this code and maybe find another way to make it load faster when sending the refer emails.
Here is the code:

<?php
  function AppendFile($path,$value) {
    $F = fopen($path,"a");
    fwrite($F,$value."\n");
    fclose($F);
  }

if (!$Name || !$Email || !$Sex) {
//Required left in blank
echo "Please go back and fill all the required fields.";
}
else
{
  $today = getdate();
  $date = sprintf("%d/%d/%d %d:%d:%d",$today[mon],$today[mday],$today[year],$today[hours],$today[minutes],$today[seconds]);

// Start Refers //

// The variable 'Email' is the user email address. //
// And the variables 'Email1' through 'Email5' are the referred email address. //

$message = "Hi \n Visit this site http://www.pulsorock.com. I hope you like it. \n\n $Name";

if ($Email1) {
mail($Email1, "Hi! Visit this site", $message,
     "From: $Email\r\n"
    ."X-Mailer: Boletin de Pulsorock.com");
}
if ($Email2) {
mail($Email2, "Hi! Visit this site", $message,
     "From: $Email\r\n"
    ."X-Mailer: Boletin de Pulsorock.com");
}
if ($Email3) {
mail($Email3, "Hi! Visit this site", $message,
     "From: $Email\r\n"
    ."X-Mailer: Boletin de Pulsorock.com");
}
if ($Email4) {
mail($Email4, "Hi! Visit this site", $message,
     "From: $Email\r\n"
    ."X-Mailer: Boletin de Pulsorock.com");
}
if ($Email5) {
mail($Email5, "Hi! Visit this site", $message,
     "From: $Email\r\n"
    ."X-Mailer: Boletin de Pulsorock.com");
}
// End Refers //

  $Name = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Name);
  $Email = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email);
  $Telephone = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Telephone);
  $City = sprintf("\"%s\"",$City);
  $Age = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Age);
  $Sex = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Sex);
  $Email1 = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email1);
  $Email2 = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email2);
  $Email3 = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email3);
  $Email4 = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email4);
  $Email5 = sprintf("\"%s\"",$Email5);
  $sentdate = sprintf("\"%s\"",$date);

  $d = ",";

  $Output = $Name.$d.$Email.$d.$Telephone.$d.$City.$d.$Age.$d.$Sex.$d.$Email1.$d.$Email2.$d.$Email3.$d.$Email4.$d.$Email5.$d.$sentdate;

  AppendFile($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/file-name.csv",$Output);

// endif
}

echo "Thank you for your participation.";
?>

[sarahk]

If it is the mailing you can put a little thanks popup window out to say "thank you for the referral".

BUT what it's really doing is calling
domail.php?email1=xyz&email2=abc&email3=qwe

etc.

and domail sends the email before showing the thanks message.

this leaves the main browser free to return to the previous/home page etc and show real content straight away. See propertyinvestor.co.nz and sign up for the newsletter, you can sign off again straight away - we haven't sent one out in months so don't worry, we haven't got time to spam you let alone the inclination.

===============
an alternate idea is to say thank you before doing the emailing giving the impression that the emails have been sent. The risks associated with this are:
-- what happens if the user clicks off the page before the processing finishes (anyone know?)
-- I've heard that some browsers won't show content until it's complete so for those users you won't have gained anything.

[Anon]

As for the risks

-- shouldn't make any difference; the server can't know the browser's not receiving the content it's sending out.

-- depends on the layout used in the page (NS4 (and I've heard: IE6) won't display a table until the closing </table> has been received.). Besides, this can be dealt with by sending all the page content (up to and including the before sending the emails.

Consider combining the email addresses in the Cc: or Bcc: field of a single email. After all, the emails themselves are exactly the same... there may be a question of what you use for the To: field, but something can be figured out.

[cheald]

You can bcc them, but I've had problems using Bcc: with PHP.

A better solution might be to drop all the emails into a text file, and then run a cron job once an hour or so to parse the file and send these mails out through sendmail, or whatever your mail subsystem is. Your page will load quickly, and it makes a lot more sense to do this through a system-level process if possible, rather than bogging down your web engine.