How to configure PHP to send e-mail?

Question

I need to send mail to the users of my website using php script. I have tried using mail function in php.
My code is as follows:

  $to = "[email protected]";
  $subject = "Test mail";
  $message = "My message";
  $from = "[email protected]";
  $headers = "From:" . $from;
  mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);

When I try running the program this is what I get:

 Warning: mail(): Failed to connect to mailserver at "localhost" port 25, verify your "SMTP" and "smtp_port" setting in php.ini or use ini_set().

Please tell me what address to include in the $from variable. Do I need a smtp server for this? How do I send mails using a localhost? Please tell me what exactly to edit in the php.ini file

I am new to all this.. Please help me..

Answer 1

Use PHPMailer instead: https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

How to use it:

require('./PHPMailer/class.phpmailer.php');
$mail=new PHPMailer();
$mail->CharSet = 'UTF-8';

$body = 'This is the message';

$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host       = 'smtp.gmail.com';

$mail->SMTPSecure = 'tls';
$mail->Port       = 587;
$mail->SMTPDebug  = 1;
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;

$mail->Username   = '[email protected]';
$mail->Password   = '123!@#';

$mail->SetFrom('[email protected]', $name);
$mail->AddReplyTo('[email protected]','no-reply');
$mail->Subject    = 'subject';
$mail->MsgHTML($body);

$mail->AddAddress('[email protected]', 'title1');
$mail->AddAddress('[email protected]', 'title2'); /* ... */

$mail->AddAttachment($fileName);
$mail->send();