Debugging PHP Mail() and/or PHPMailer

Question

I'm quite stuck with a problem sending mail from a PHP script. Some data:

• Shared hosting, no SSH access, only hosting provider panel
• PHP version 5.2.5
• Last year I built a site which had no problems sending mail with the same hosting
• Let's say the domain is “domain.com” and my private address is “[email protected]” for anonimity's sake in the following code.

Here's the code:

<?php error_reporting(E_ALL);  ini_set("display_errors", 1);  $to = "[email protected]"; $subject = "Hi"; $body = "Test 1\nTest 2\nTest 3"; $headers = 'From: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .     'errors-to: [email protected]' . "\r\n" .     'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();  if (mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers)) {     echo("Message successfully sent"); } else {     echo("Message sending failed"); }  require('class.phpmailer.php'); $message = "Hello world"; $mail = new PHPMailer(); $mail->CharSet = "UTF-8"; $mail->AddAddress("[email protected]", "Agos"); $mail->SetFrom("[email protected]","My Site"); $mail->Subject = "Test Message"; $mail->Body = $message; $mail->Send(); ?> 

And here is what I get:

Message sending failed Could not instantiate mail function.

Which is baffling to say the least. Is there anything I can do to get at least some more meaningful errors? Why is code from the class showing up in my file?

Answer 1

It looks like the class.phpmailer.php file is corrupt. I would download the latest version and try again.

I've always used phpMailer's SMTP feature:

$mail->IsSMTP(); $mail->Host = "localhost"; 

And if you need debug info:

$mail->SMTPDebug  = 2; // enables SMTP debug information (for testing)                        // 1 = errors and messages                        // 2 = messages only