Beginner's mail issue

TimG

My localhost won't send me an email. I am on Windows Vista and my mail is Gmail.

My php.ini file has SMTP set to localhost and smtp port set to 25. I gather from the help on this site that that should be good enough, but nothing is coming to me. If I run the same script on my ISP I get it coming through OK.

Do I need to do something with sendmail? That looks quite complicated. Is Gmail fussier than other mail services?

Unrelated, but also very basic - what makes changes to php.ini appear in the php.info file? Do I have to reload the page, restart the localhost or reboot the machine?

If somebody could guide me through these points I would be grateful.

Tim

bradgrafelman

The reason that localhost works fine for actual webhosts is that they have a mail transfer agent (MTA) setup on the webserver that can handle SMTP connections and send mail; Windows does not come with this software installed by default.

Since you're trying to send from your G-mail address, you'll not only want to connect to Gmail's SMTP servers but also authenticate with the server before sending the message. As such, you've exceeded the functionality of the internal mail() command and will need to use 3rd-party solutions such as PHPMailer, XPertMailer, etc.

TimG wrote:
Unrelated, but also very basic - what makes changes to php.ini appear in the php.info file? Do I have to reload the page, restart the localhost or reboot the machine?

That depends on your setup. If PHP is being executed as a CGI binary, then changes to php.ini should be reflected in a phpinfo() readout immediately. Otherwise, if using PHP as an ISAPI module, you will most likely need to restart your webserver (but not the entire machine).