[WillUK]

Hi

Hopefully this will be an easy question to answer!

I am looking at publishing a site (my first site, excluding that of the office that I work for in fact), and I need to understand the processes at work behind the mechanics of web publishing.

More specifically, if I purchase pop-3 mail boxes through a particular ISP, say 123-reg.com, does that mean I am required to host the whole site through 123-reg.com too??? or am I free to look for site hosting elsewhere?

In particular, I am worried about the mail function consequences. Basically, I have built a standard contact form that currently works when the recipient's email address (set within the php code of sendmail.php file) is set to an address that is registered with the ISP that host's this office's web site e.g. myname@thiscompany.com

However, when I alter the recipient address (just to test) to an alternate address; one that is not purchased through this office's ISP e.g. hotmail/gmail or any other address (including pop-3), the mail is never received.

The implications of this are that only pop-3 mail boxes relating to where a site is hosted can be used in conjunction with a mail function (on site contact form).....This doesn't seem right to me.
Do I need to point the ISP that hosts the pop-3 mail boxes to the server that is hosting the site? If so, this doesn't explain why hotmail or gmail etc do not work.....

Please could someone clarify exactly what is going on here?

Thanks
Will

[job0107]

You must remember that all email use a specific server and web pages (HTML) use a different server.
So your email uses a MAIL server and your web page uses an HTML server.

Now, if your MAIL and HTML servers are in the same domain, then when they setup their PHP, it automatically points to the MAIL server.
But if you have your MAIL server by a different host, then you will have to specify the SMTP server address in the php.ini file.
You can do this by using the ini_set() function in PHP. PHP: ini_set - Manual


Example:

PHP Code:

ini_set("SMTP","mail.someserver.com");
ini_set("smtp_port",25);
ini_set("sendmail_from","you@youremail.com"); 

[WillUK]

Thanks Jerry. That makes sense

Just two more questions:

1/ Does the sendmail_from address also have to be one that is registered with the mail server?

2/ Can the address for the $recipient (where the mail is dumped after the contact form has been submitted) be the same as the sendmail_from address or would this cause problems?

Cheers

[job0107]

The important things are the SMTP and the smtp_port.
Usually the smtp_port is set to 25 by default, so you won't have to set that unless you need to change it.
sendmail_from is mandatory, but setting it in php.ini only defines it as the default.
It can also be set using the [string $additional_headers] in the mail() function.
See PHP: mail - Manual for clarification.
Also sendmail_from can be any address you choose.
But SMTP and smtp_port must match the SMTP server that you want to use.