lambchop

Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated. I'll have a search for the other thread see if they can help me understand what's happening. I ended up finally getting it to work using my ISP mailserver which appeared to use my ISP email address (which I don't normally use) as some sort of authenticator. It worked as long as I used that ISP address as the return address. Maybe some sort of anti-spam measure? Thanks again!

I'm hoping someone can help me out with this - I'm sure it's pretty basic (?), but I just cannot work it out by myself. It all started with the sidebar on PHP mail() Dependencies (pg 297). I'm one of the unfortunate ones: Running Windows, my ISP requires authentication (username and password) therefore I cannot simply change the php.ini file to get the mail script (10.1) to work. (even though I tried it anyway and - of course - it didn't work. I got a Failed to connect to mailserver" error). As suggested in the sidebar, I've downloaded a free windows SMTP server (http://www.softstack.com/freesmtp.html) unfortunately, the only help I've been able to find about how to use it refers to configuring outlook or other mail programs. Tried saving it where it default to and tried saving it to the XAMPP directory. No joy with either. I've had a good search through this forum and the previous one at DMCInsights, but can't find any related threads (using SMTP as the search term). Perhaps I've missunderstood what 'localhost' means in the context of a mailserver? So I ditched the free SMTP server and had a go at using yahoo as SMTP for a workaround while get my head around this. But when I tried (using Yahoo Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) - smtp.mail.yahoo.com (SSL enabled, port 995) I got the same sort of error message: "Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at "smtp.mail.yahoo.com" port 995, verify your "SMTP" and "smtp_port" setting in php.ini or use ini_set() in C:\xampp\htdocs\email.php on line 34" I've tried both setting the php.ini file AND using ini_set code. What's got me stumped is that both methods (php.ini and ini_set code) seem to know which mail server I'm trying to connect to and which port (as these are repeated in the error messages) but they just don't connect. What am I missing? Thanks in advance for any assistance!