emailing - how to specify outbound SMTP server

[antoine]

I am aware of the mail() function in php but I have yet to read anything in any manual which tells me how to specify an outbound SMTP server for sending messages. I have seen many messges which say that you can set it at the web server level but what I would ideally like to do is use any ol' smtp outbound and specify it a run time - for example. this is especially the case as I am using a hosted service which does not give me an outbound smtp, but could theoretically use a hotmail account.

Is there a way of doing this?

Any help much appreciated.

[toma42]

hotmail doesn't allow for message relaying when not logged in to hotmail proper.

You could buy a yahoo pop account and use their smtp.mail.yahoo.com authenticaiton-required server if you can't setup any other smtp server.

[antoine]

I still don't know how to specify which outbound SMTP server I am using when using the MAIL() Command. Bascially what I would appreciate is one/two lines of code of PHP which shows how to send message 'test' to '[e-mail]' where the SMTP outbound is specified as a parameter....if this exists....

[toma42]

you specify the smtp server in the php.ini or by using ini_set(). There is no parameter to mail() for the smtp server.