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James M.
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Post by James M. »

Hi, is there an alternative to the mail() function that works in pretty much the same way, except you don't need an SMTP server?

And if there is no alternative, does anyone know any good, free SMTP servers that work well with PHP?
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xisle
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Post by xisle »

not sure of the latest smtp freware, but beware of apps that open your machine up as an smtp relay.
This is why some of the windows apps are 'free'. I ended up being pounded with SPAM until I figured out how to use port forwarding on my firewall to get around the problem.
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James M.
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Post by James M. »

well i found one free SMTP sever, its called Apache JAMES, from the makers of Apache HTTP server. I kind of quit on trying to get it to work since any mail sent from the server was never recieved and any I couldn't find a way to read the mail sent to the server. I looked for othr SMTPs but they never worked so thats why I'm looking for an alternative to the php mail function or a SMTP server
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launchcode
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Post by launchcode »

Unless you've got a fixed domain/IP on your local machine, running your own SMTP server isn't the best idea in the world as any mail server with a reverse look-up will bounce any message you send.

Why not relay through your ISPs mail server via one of the many superb PHP classes like PHPMailer? http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/
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James M.
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Post by James M. »

Well im only running all these servers on my computer so that i can practice php for free. I never knew of PHPMailer, or that sourceforge.net was an open source software development website (i just downloaded from it all the time). Thanks for the info.
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launchcode
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Post by launchcode »

Fair enough :) I'd still definitely give PHPMailer a try though - superbly well written class file.
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