How to keep spambots off my sent mail?

Nijhazer

Guys--

My Web site is finally up and running. On it, users can register accounts to submit articles and such. The script for processing a new user registration assigns a randomly generated password to the user, then sends it via email. If the user doesn't get the email, he/she doesn't get the password.

That's why it's becoming a real problem that some anti-spam clients are reporting this email as spam. Many users are not receiving the email. I've never used the mail() function before this, so how can I formulate the email it sends so that it is least likely to be interpreted as spam?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

-Nij

JDcrack

It's possible that you are sending out the email with incomplete headers.
Example:

//You may have something like
mail($contactemail, $subject, $message); 

//what you need is:
$myname = "My Name"; 
$myemail = "myself@email.com"; 

$contactname = "Mister Name"; 
$contactemail = "contact@email.com"; 

$message = "hello this is a test message "; 
$subject = "Your Password"; 

$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; 
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n"; 
$headers .= "From: ".$myname." <".$myemail.">\r\n"; 
$headers .= "To: ".$contactname." <".$contactemail.">\r\n"; 
$headers .= "Reply-To: ".$myname." <$myreplyemail>\r\n"; 
$headers .= "X-Priority: 1\r\n"; 
$headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High\r\n"; 
$headers .= "X-Mailer: Just My Server"; 

mail($contactemail, $subject, $message, $headers);

Nijhazer

I did have headers in the email I was sending, but they were extremely basic. Thanks very much for the ones you posted; I'll try those.

-Nij

shumway

What does "Just My Server" stand for - should I replace that with my server-dns?

shumway

and when I'm at it 🙂

I dont want to send my message with high priority - do I change high to normal or what?

JDcrack

You will find you answers here:
PHP Manual: mail()

$headers .= "From: Name<mail@server.com>\n";
$headers .= "X-Sender: <mail@server.com>\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP\n"; //mailer
$headers .= "X-Priority: 3\n"; //1 UrgentMessage, 3 Normal
$headers .= "Return-Path: <mail@server.com>\n";
//Uncomment this to send html format
//$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
//$headers .= "cc: [email]birthdayarchive@php.net[/email]\n"; // CC to
//$headers .= "bcc: [email]mail@server.com[/email]"; // BCCs to, separete multiple with commas [email]mail@mail.com[/email], [email]mail2@mail.com[/email]