Page 538 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Part III: Using PHP in Practice
How about if you ’ re running on a Windows server? In that case you ’ re in luck. Because PHP on
Windows doesn ’ t use an MTA and instead talks directly to an SMTP server, you can easily set the return
path in Windows via a php.ini setting called sendmail_from :

ini_set( “sendmail_from”, “bob@example.com” );
mail( “Jim Smith < jim@example.com > ”, “Hello”, $message, “From: Bob Jones

< bob@example.com > ” );
Sending HTML Emails

Your message body doesn ’ t have to be plain text; you can send an HTML Web page as an email if you
prefer. This allows you to format your message more attractively. However, you need to bear in mind
that not all email applications display HTML emails in the same way (or at all), so it ’ s worth testing your
HTML email with various email applications before you send it out — especially if you ’ re sending the
email to a large mailing list — and you should also include a plain text version of the message along
with the HTML version (you find out how to do this in a moment).

To send an HTML email message, you need to do two things:
1. Create the HTML markup for your message body.
2. Send the message using the mail() function, passing in additional MIME headers to indicate
that the message body is in HTML format.

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, and it ’ s an extension to the standard email
protocols that allows, among other things, messages to contain multiple text and non - text attachments.
MIME is also used in other Internet protocols; in fact you ’ ve already seen the Content - Type: MIME
header in the “ Working with HTTP ” section earlier in the chapter.
First, create your HTML message body. At the time of writing, most email applications only understand
a subset of the full HTML standard, so it ’ s best to make your markup as simple as possible. CSS support
is particularly bad, so you may find you need to eschew CSS layouts in favor of table - based layouts.

You can find out more about creating HTML emails, as well as download some free HTML email
templates, from http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/templates/ . Another useful site is
the Email Standards Project ( http://www.email - standards.org/ ) that tracks the state of
Web standards support across various email applications.

Here ’ s a very simple HTML email message:

$message = < < < END_HTML
< html >
< body >
< h1 style=”color: #AA3333;” > Thank You < /h1 >
< p > Thank you for contacting < a href=”http://www.example.com/” > The Widget
Company < /a > . We’ll be in touch shortly. < /p >
< /body >
< /html >
END_HTML;

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