Send email with PHP | Create a Working Contact Form Using PHP 

I would like to see sending SMS to individuals phone with PHP and also sending bulk email with PHP

Thank you for this video Dave. I bought some of your courses on udemy and they have been really helpful

A similar video to this one but involving image attachments WITHOUT saving them on the server permanently. Maybe a part 2 ? Thank you

Another great video, wouldnt mind seeing a updated video on php frameworks like code ignitor

I was going to ask for Laravel, but Dev Henry beat me to it. I'm sure you have Udemy course on Laravel? From a selfish perspective, I would like to see the php way of taking several user input nuber values, carrying out a calculation, and then displaying the result. I've patched together a working JS version, but still not sorted out the validations (RegEx) for the fields.

I have the same issue, did you manage to find answer on how to do it? I'd really appreciate if you could let me know

It gets a bad reputation as it's been around so long, and it's easy to write bad code with it; having said that, it's also very easy to pick up and is available everywhere

Just upload the code you have locally, including the entire vendor folder

If there are no error messages from the SMTP server, then the problem could be with the recipient account - check to see if the message is in the spam folder

Absolutely, PHP is still very popular

No, those files go in your web root or project folder. The PHPMailer package goes into the same folder. (or the vendor folder if you're using Composer)

This is a feature of how the SMTP server works, yes. You can't send an email from someone else's account, you can only send it from the account you're authenticating with. You can use a "reply-to" however if you want someone to reply to a different address that you're sending from.

Hi, I just came by your tutorial and I'm wondering, if I make contact form using SMTP server on my website, from which email address would be an email sent? Can you even use SMTP server to make contact form since it displays only email address you're authenticanting with? Sry if this is a stupid question, but I just started with PHP. @@dave-hollingworth

If this is just a local error, there's a solution here: stackoverflow.com/questions/30556773/how-to-fix-stream-socket-enable-crypto-ssl-operation-failed-with-code-1

Really? Hadn't spotted that! Thank you for letting me know, I'll get that fixed :-)

Are you using the VSCode built-in webserver by any chance? Try using a separate server like Apache (you can get with XAMPP if you need it)

@@dave-hollingworth So i must transfer my project in htdocs folder in xampp, and then run it with apache?

@@sosdto7606 Yes, that's it

@@dave-hollingworth still have o problem. The following. Fatal error. SMTP error: data not accepted... I serach for it and find that the problem is that the mail->From is different with the $mail->addAddress...But what i actually want with this email form, is sending from my friend's mail for example, to my mail....If in the form, i put my email to the mail textarea, then it works..But if i put another mail , then it doesnt work..Do you have any solution..Thank you very much.

@@sosdto7606 When using an SMTP server, you can only send email from the account that you're authorising with, you can't send emails from anyone's account. You can add a reply-to value though if you want to suggest to the email client that a reply is sent to a different email.

If they view the source in the browser, they'll just see the generated HTML. PHP code is executed on the server, before this is sent to the browser, so the source code is never sent to the client.

@@dave-hollingworth is not the link to the PHP file in the action="-" (element field of the HTML file) and thereby susceptible to also being viewed? I am asking is there not a way to download and view the source of a file once the specified location is known/

@@alifelongfriend While you can see which file the form submits to as you say, you can't download this file to see the source code. If you request that file from the server by putting the URL in the browser's address bar (e.g. example.com/process-form.php) then you'll still get the result of the PHP code running before it gets to you. The web server always executes the PHP code before sending it to the browser, so there's no way to see the PHP code on the server in the browser.

The easiest way to install Composer on Windows is using the installer: getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#installation-windows

@@dave-hollingworth Thanks, it worked. Now my problem is that I'm not allowed to activate messages from third party (less secured apps)? Any ideas how I could fix this?

@@lukas584 www.febooti.com/products/automation-workshop/tutorials/enable-google-app-passwords-for-smtp.html

​@@dave-hollingworth Thank you Dave, I followed the given instructions and it finally worked (so happy). The thing is that I do not see who is sending me the data from the form as the email does not appear in my gmail. It's like I would send an email to myself (receiver email and sender email is both the same. It's the email which I set up in the code). Very strange, maybe I messed up with the code but I have already checked your instruction given in the video several times. Probably it's the 2 step verification, using the generated password which does not allow to communicate with third party? What are your thoughts on this one?

@@lukas584 Not sure what you mean - but if you're not getting emails you send to yourself, Gmail has been known to block this - see some of the results here: www.google.co.uk/search?q=gmail+smtp+can%27t+send+to+yourself

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the VSCode live server - are you able to run it using a different server to see if it's a VSCode issue?

@@dave-hollingworth I scavenged the internet and it seems it's the VScode's live server's fault. I ran the built in PHP local host server and it works. I mean, I still get the errors but they are connected with my poor understanding of the SMTP provider I chose and not your tutorial. Thank you for the upload!

@@Gracek.g Ah ok good to know - I'll keep that in mind in case anyone else has a similar issue. Thanks!

I had the same issue. I got an HTML Error 405 when running index.html in the Live Server. Then I opened index.html in PHP Server and it successfully sent the message and loaded the "sent.html" page with no problem.

Check out my video on how to upload a file, then you can use PHPMailer to attach a file to an email (details in the PHPMailer documentation)

Are you using a service like Mailgun where you can only send emails to one verified email address (for the free tier anyway)?

In what way didn't it work?

@@dave-hollingworth First of all thank you very much for your tutorials, it really is great information and delivered in a clear and concise manner. Secondly thank you for such a rapid response, wow! unfortunately all i can tell you at this point is the first time i ran your code it did not send the email, i checked my syntax and tried again to no avail. I originally made this comment hoping to learn why it did not work, but I have since gotten successful results using completely different code. so again thank you for your response

Please see this: ru-vid.coml7ERVQd7Ti8?feature=share

You're right that wouldn't be secure, but you're not openly sharing your password - this is only used to authenticate with the SMTP server, and is only on the server in the PHP code.

It looks like you need to use an App password now: www.febooti.com/products/automation-workshop/tutorials/enable-google-app-passwords-for-smtp.html

You can only send email from the account you're authenticating on the SMTP server with; i.e. you can't send email from someone else arbitrarily

@@dave-hollingworth thanks so much. So how will I know the system is working before I put the site up?

@@webdesigntom Try it with another email address, you can always use a throwaway email address just to test it, or a service like mailtrap

@@dave-hollingworth ok thank you. That leads me in a direction. I was using another one of my emails. I am just confused because I have a field to allow potential customer to put in their email (I used an alternate one) and it was coming to that email instead of my email so I'll have to learn better how to make it work. But thanks again and you've been a big help. Got yourself a subscriber.

Yes of course, you can use whatever SMTP server you have access to, all you need are the hostname and connection credentials

Enable debugging as shown in the video to see if there are any more detailed messages shown in the debugging output. That message though suggests a network issue

You can't send an email from someone else's account. The email is sent from the account that's authorised on the server. What you can do though is add a "reply-to" address, which is what the email client will use as the recipient email address if you click "reply". Not all email clients support this though. For example: $mail->addReplyTo('info@example.com', 'Information');

@@dave-hollingworth I did a different smtp to get the result. It works fine now. I noticed you were using a sandbox to make it work, I used sendinblue or smth like that

@@loopymomy2532 How did you do that ?

@@anthonygeorges5828 use a different stmp don't use Gmail.

You can put a link to Pastebin, GitHub etc. here

What URL is shown in the browser's address bar when you submit the form and get the 404?

@@dave-hollingworth Thanks, hadn't thought to actually look there. It's coming up as "send-email.php" in the address bar. I should specify that on the browser when I click "send" I actually get a 405 error, but in the VScode terminal it shows up as a 404 for send-email.php - not found. *edit - and I had turned on debugging mode, as per your instructions, but I still just get the same error*

@@jamiemacdonald5972 Are you developing in a subfolder of the root? E.g. localhost/subfolder/form.html If so, you need to include that subfolder (or don't start the action attribute of the form with a slash if you are doing) I'm afraid I don't use VSCode so I'm not familiar with its debugging tools

@@dave-hollingworth Yep, same folder, which is why it's strange getting the 404. Anyway thanks for the help and for the video, great intro to php concepts!

@@dave-hollingworth thanks Dave, you are on to something with the sub folders. Great tut, thanks.

You need to run the command line commands from your project folder

@@dave-hollingworth and how to run this??

This would seem to suggest that the username and password you're using to authenticate with the SMTP server are incorrect

@@dave-hollingworth I'm certain they are correct. Can it suggest something else?

@@NoName-yw1pt Perhaps a network issue, is the SMTP server host reachable from your server?

@@dave-hollingworth Probably not, I don't know. How can I check?

@@NoName-yw1pt Try using the SMTP server from an email client (i.e. configure the email client to send emails using that SMTP server)

Try adding the debugging code to show the SMTP debugging info

@@dave-hollingworth can you write me an example code here.

@@dave-hollingworth yes added but not showing any error. Locally

The message could not be sent. MAILER Error: invalid email address

I am having a error now as failed to connect to smtp host

Absolutely, as long as your live server has access to the SMTP server over the network (which is most likely)

@@dave-hollingworth Thank u so much 🙏🏽🤍

Because I have tried making different forms and when I upload them and run them online, form is not submitted and all I keep seeing is the else part for failure. But I'm using a personal email address which is not connected to the domain, could that be the problem?

@@denisk256 I'm not sure what you mean - when submitting the form, you can put in whatever email address you like, this will be sent to the recipient. When you authenticate with the SMTP server, the username is usually the same as the email address that you use as the sender. You can't send email from anyone's email address, only the one you authenticate with.

Could you please help me and take me through how I can authenticate with SMTP

@@denisk256 You just need to provide the username, password and hostname of the SMTP server

Is it possible to be doe using a mobile phone, coz right now I'm away from my laptop

You need to have PHP already installed, so if you do you'll have a php.exe file installed somewhere on your system. I recommend XAMPP for Windows if you haven't got one already

@@dave-hollingworth Thanks, I'll look into this 👍🏻

A 500 error is an error on the server, most likely an error in the code - try adding these lines to the top of your PHP: ini_set('display_errors', '1'); ini_set('display_startup_errors', '1'); error_reporting(E_ALL); This will show the error detail instead of the 500 error. Alternatively, look in the web server's error log to see the error detail.

@@dave-hollingworth I think your example PHP file is faulty. Check the file at the lower bottom where the HTML part starts.

@@khancross Please can you be more specific? Which file and which line do you think is faulty?

@@dave-hollingworth send-email.php file is faulty. Check last lines in the document

Sorry I made a mistake. However where is the autoload.php?

No - you would typically store the password in a separate file, e.g. an .env file and put this in your .gitignore file so it isn't uploaded to your repo

@@dave-hollingworth ah, so it's fine to have my "mail.php" (the PHP file you created) & install phpmailer in the same environment as my work folder? ex. project-folder/ ls: index.html contact.html mail.php vendor/ How do I go about moving the username & password to a .env file.(first time hearing about .env) Will the PHP file work the same? Thank you Dave for the answer back, I'm new to PHP so I'm still learning atm.

Yes, as long as you have the necessary software like PHP installed

You can upload the code to a webhost and it will work in the same way

To authenticate with the SMTP server.

It's a command prompt / terminal window

@@dave-hollingworth is it windows run cmd or what?

@@seo-rupindersingh5148 Yes, that's one way, or look for command prompt application

Please check the Google documentation for how to use their SMTP servers from a program

also tried hosting the files on web server but still didnt work

If you get a generic error message like that, there should be more error detail available in the error log - you should have access to this in the hostinger web panel. This should tell us exactly what the error is and where it's occurring

Try using a web server instead of VSCode's built-in web server

@@dave-hollingworth Yes, I have been looking at countless videos on this 405 and I haven't gotten any head way

As far as I know, yes - I'm not sure how a bot could get your login data from this, unless your server was compromised and they had access to your source code with your credentials in it.

You need to change them, they're just examples

@@dave-hollingworth Thank you for your answer, I managed to fix this issue indeed. How come the function header is not working? Like I just get the PHP debug page but the HTML page is not appearing.

@@Topo-ev2ct Could be many reasons - do you get a detailed error message? That should tell you where the error has occurred, in what script and on what line

@@dave-hollingworth not really a detailed error, whenever I press on the send error, i just get a white page and that's it, the mail does indeed get sent but i am not able to head on another pages (as the header itself should do)

@@Topo-ev2ct A blank white page usually means an error has occurred but PHP isn't configured to display it - try adding these lines to the top of your code: ini_set('display_errors', '1'); ini_set('display_startup_errors', '1'); error_reporting(E_ALL);

Ok I will mention it to instructor support, thank you for letting me know

@@dave-hollingworth please do and inform me here on what the problem could be..

@@abanwaraphael1526 They won't be able to give me any details of an individual customer, you'll have to contact Udemy support directly yourself with regards to specific purchasing issues: support.udemy.com/

i found out already, thank you.

Yes, you could modify the form to have a file attachment, and attach files using PHPMailer

@@dave-hollingworth Thank you so much! Great video 👍

I'm afraid not, I haven't used Synology - it sounds like it's a permissions or network problem if the code works locally - I would suggest contacting their technical support

support.google.com/a/answer/172176?hl=en

@@dave-hollingworth got it thanks

@@dave-hollingworth actually tho do i need to have a company to log in

It's the most common OS on hosting platforms, in my experience

You need to be able to run PHP - the simplest way to do this is to install something like XAMPP and put the scripts in the root folder, then load them from there.

@@dave-hollingworth it works sir thank you...but i hosted the website in cpanel it not works why?

Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.

@@shafeeqsharafi3731 In what way doesn't it work? Do you get any error messages?

@@dave-hollingworth Message could not be sent. Mailer Error: SMTP Error: Could not authenticate.

Of course: www.udemy.com/course/php-for-beginners-/?couponCode=LPA_AUG_2022

Use the mail function: www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

@@dave-hollingworth would that works on free web hostings

@@BalkanLeaksArchive Depends on the hosting, you'd have to check their documentation

@@dave-hollingworth i think they dont support mail send. Can i use some free smpt server and implemnt in my script

@@BalkanLeaksArchive Yes, you can use any free SMTP server. I would strongly suggest you use PHPMailer, it's just plain PHP code but wrapped up in a library. There's no reason it shouldn't work on your hosting, and it's so much easier than the mail() function.

Are you requiring the file that the class is defined in? Either using Composer's autoloader or requiring them directly.