PHP mail-function

[Negative]

I'm having a little problem here...
I'm starting up my own e-business, and I'm writing it all myself (in PHP).

To sign up, users must provide their name, email, pick a username and a password.
After they click the "submit"-link, an email is sent to the mailaddress they provided, and that's where the problem is situated...

Here's my code:

$mailSubject = "Confirm Your membership.";
                $mailBody =  "Hi $firstname $lastname,\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Thank you for joining ********\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Please click the following link to confirm your membership. If clicking does\n";
                $mailBody .= "not work, please copy and paste into your browser manually.\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "http://*****.***.**\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Thank you.\n";
                $mailHeaders = "From: postmaster@neg.be \n";
                $mailHeaders = "ReplyTo: postmaster@neg.be \n";

                mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailHeaders);

The mail is sent, but the problem seems to be in the headers... the mail seems to be coming from anonymous@priorweb.be.... That's pretty cool, but there is no anonymous@priorweb.be (that address doesn't exist). And it should be coming from postmaster@neg.be.

I'm guessing that there is something wrong with my headers (or the formatting). Priorweb is my host, so I'm guessing (again) that they decline my headers and assign the anonymous-thingy to it... any suggestions?

[tampabay420]

hm, that's weird... the syntax you [posted should be working? have you tried removing that extra line brake at the end of the headers?

[ghostintheruins]

maybe u can get some hints from these to e-mail forms:
- contactme from www.stevedawson.com - free, its very configurable, and easy to do it.

or allstuffmailer from http://www.Frenck.nl - also free, didnt try it

or do a search on www.scriptsearch.com

good luck

[Negative]

This is weird... I took out the $Mailheader variables and manually added them in the script, and it works now...

$mailSubject = "******** - Confirm Your membership.";
                $mailBody =  "Hi $firstname $lastname,\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Thank you for joining ********!\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Please click the following link to confirm your membership. If clicking does\n";
                $mailBody .= "not work, please copy and paste into your browser manually.\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "http://********.***.**\n";
                $mailBody .= "\n";
                $mailBody .= "Thank you.\n";

                mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, "From: postmaster@neg.be");

That's what you get for using variables

[wyverspur]

Perhaps $mailheader is being used by the hosting company as a global php variable which would override a local one, if I'm not mistaken....perhaps try it with a rephrased variable name

[pwaring]

The problem was that you were assigning $mailHeaders a new value with the Reply-To line, rather than concatenating the string. I.e.:

$mailHeaders = "From: postmaster@neg.be \n";
$mailHeaders = "ReplyTo: postmaster@neg.be \n";

should have been:

$mailHeaders = "From: postmaster@neg.be \n";
$mailHeaders .= "ReplyTo: postmaster@neg.be \n";

If you want to be even more fancy, you can do this:

$mailHeaders = "From: Negative <postmaster@neg.be> \n";

which will show up as your name in most email clients/web based interfaces. It's a bit more friendly than an email address (you can replace Negative with say "Postmaster" or whatever you want).

I got fed up of messing with the headers manually whenever I wanted to send mail, so I wrote a class to do the work for me. Now all I have to do is call the appropriate method (i.e. sender_email($email, $name)) and it adds the headers automatically. The source code is available if you want to see how it's done.

BTW, the ReplyTo field is a bit redundant IMO if you're going to set it to the same value as the From field.

Oh, and if a value isn't specified for the From: field (as it wasn't in your case, because you were overwriting the string with the ReplyTo: field), PHP will use whatever's defined in php.ini. I used to get emails from 'nobody@f2o.org' before I figured out how to fix this (I'd accidentally put the To: headers in the wrong place, or used From: twice or something like that).

Hope this helps!

[stanger]

I'm pretty noob on php but interested in...

would you like to try this?

$mailHeaders = "From: postmaster@neg.be \n";
$mailHeaders = "<postmaster@neg.be> \n";

mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailHeaders);

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by stanger
I'm pretty noob on php but interested in...

would you like to try this?

$mailHeaders = "From: postmaster@neg.be \n";
$mailHeaders = "<postmaster@neg.be> \n";

mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailHeaders);

stanger:
a) I've already pointed that out
b) You've made the same (albeit easy to make) mistake as Negative, you're overwritting the value of $mailHeaders with the second assignment as opposed to concatenating the string

[stanger]

hmmm...
a) i was to slow
b) however...
that php file is the wrong place to set the email reply address
(if things go to database and $postmastermail should be global)

mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailHeaders, $postmastermail)

would this work?

or should be:

mail($email, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailHeaders "<$postmastermail>")
???

[Negative]

Mr. Waring, you are a genius... or I'm an airhead, whichever works...
Thank you! Problem solved