iloveny

Yes, I understand your point. However, MSN Hotmail's system to prevent spam is not just from their SNDS. It is very complex. As I said before, they somekind of robot to detect your subject, header, reply to, from and message in your email. The robot will then determine whether your email is a spam or not. So, it is really a combination of subject, header of email and SNDS or whatever the robot in their subject. That's what I thought. But, for sure, adding your SMTP server to SNDS will absolutely help a lot.

Hi DeathStar! The "TO" field is to send the email to a hotmail account. The problem we have is that php mail() can't send to hotmail account. So, the TO field is suppose to be a hotmail account. There's no FROM field because it is auto-generated by SMTP server. If you put REPLY TO in your header, the FROM will be whatever in the REPLY TO.

UPDATE This link will conclude this thread. The link is an article for developers that want to send emails to MSN Hotmail account. It tells you how to prevent MSN Hotmail from blocking the emails that you sent from SMTP Server. http://postmaster.msn.com/ Thanks for everybody and thanks for reading. ps: For the author, please mark it as a ANSWERED thread, I can't do this because I am not the author.

UPDATE This is an important link regarding the problem sending out email to MSN Hotmail users: http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=108632 It probably concludes this thread as well. Thanks guys!

UPDATE This is soo weirdd... I successfully sent an email to Hotmail account using below code: $to = "youraccount@hotmail.com"; $subject = "Results from your Request Info form"; $headers = "this is the header"; $date = date ("l, F jS, Y"); $time = date ("h:i A"); $msg = "Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted on $date at $time.\n\n"; mail($to, $subject, $msg, $headers); It works perfectly. The email was sent to hotmail account in Bulk mail. However, if you change the wording of the subject or delete the $date and $time variable in the message, the email will not be sent. I assume that Hotmail server has somekind of robot to read subject and message and from the reading of subject and message, the robot will determine whether it is spam or not. that sophisicated??

So the code that you paste earlier, what file is that? It's better if you can send those two files in an attachment, you can email it to me.

do you have this code online that I can test? Maybe you have uploaded it to your hosting server?

Are the codes in one file or two files? What's the name of the file?

Hi shaunrigby, no, not yet, I haven't tried yet. But I some good news that I thought I would let you know. There is a thread in this forum, I think you posted there before: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,130975.0.html This guy has a problem with his email form. Everytime he sends the email, the email is blank. But, when I asked him if the email goes thru to Hotmail account, he said the email goes thru to hotmail. I am asking him to send me the code so I can take a look what's wrong with the form, and also see how he does his form so it goes thru hotmail account. There is also another guy I found from this forum. He is creating a simple mailer software. I think he has a willing to help people. So, I contact him to see if he can help with this issue. We'll see what happens. Thanks.

Hi wholetthe15, Can you past me the code, or better yet, send me the files that assosiate with sending email form. I will take a look.

Yes, I thought 'X-Mailer: PHP/'. phpversion(); was the most important too. I tried like what you have suggested, but it still won't send to my hotmail. Thanks for your help and time though!

I see your problem now. Try to send an email to hotmail account using your form. See if you can received anything (blank is ok). Thanks.

Hi wholetthe15, Can your form send out an email to MSN? And what's exactly the problem with your form?

Hi redarrow! How do we check for reverse DNS? is it in our hosting server? many many thanks in advanced!

Then I guess I will have the same problem if I try to add my shared SMTP server to SNDS Network. I built a website using ASP.Net a year ago. I used my own SMTP Server and didn't use what my shared hosting had. My SMTP server was sbcglobal.net, so basically I don't need to add it to SNDS Network. It also can reach Hotmail users, yahoo, and everybody. However, my SMTP server only allows me to send up to somewhere around 200 emails a day. This is not effective when I have customers database more than 200. If an email is sent out to more than 200 customers, an error message will occur and the email will not be sent. Very not effective but that's all it can do.

No, I haven't submitted my application yet. I was asking you did you receive any error message since you said that you were unable to add your SMTP server to SNDS network because you have shared SMTP Server. So, did you receive it any error message, or have you not tried it yet?

Shaunrigby, did you receive an error message when tried to add your shared SMTP server to SNDS Network?

Yes, I agree with it. Many of the PHP coders have problem with sending email to MSN Hotmail users. I tried to search the topic about mail() and MSN Hotmail in this forum, but there is no real solution to each of the thread I read. So, it will be great if we can make this sticky. I go briefly on SNDS FAQ, and I realize that they have very tight and strict security to prevent spam, malware and virus send by emails. That's why they have SNDS. It's really useful and effective way to prevent such things, but it's a hassle for coders to work around with them.

No, not yet. I also believe that that is the best way to go. Like I said earlier, I also use shared hosting. If I add it to SNDS Network, I think the whole shared hosting will be in the safe list. I don't know. Are we not be able to add our SMTP server to SNDS Network if we have shared hosting?

Here's the link for those who need ini_set() function description: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ini-set.php So, the idea is to change the SMTP server setting in PHP.ini. What variable name do I need to change? On the description of ini_set(), it says that the original value will be restored automatically at the end of the script. So, what I have in mind is to change the value everytime we need to send out a mail. Then, it will be changed back later on. Do you have any idea? Thanks shaunrigby!

Hi Shaunrigby, I am also using shared hosting which I thought would not be able to add to MS server. Why can't we add the shared SMTP server, does the MS Server disallow this? I do a quick search on google for FREE SMTP Server. The results are software that will send an email using our machine's smtp instead of our ISP's SMTP Server. This is typically used by travelers that can't really use their ISP's SMTP Server when they go travel. I don't think this kind of software is what we are after here. This kind of software only use our machine as SMTP server, and I don't think we can install it in to our shared hosting. If you have GMAIL account, you can actually use google SMTP server to send email out. Use smtp.google.com, but you have to provide your gmail account and password. The question here is, how can we use our own SMTP Server in shared hosting server? Thanks guys!!!

Hi! Thanks a lot guys for your help!!! Is it possible to integrate this JavaScript code with data that I will pull out from MySQL using PHP? In another word, I have to combine JavaScript with PHP code, is this possible? Thanks in advanced!

I think you can use webservice for this. There is a webservice where if you invoke them with an IP address, they will tell me on which country / city the machine is located. Try this webservice website: http://www.xmethods.net/ There are some more out there, try to google it. The thing is you have to integrate webservice in to your PHP.

Hi! Yeah, oconkero, please try to paste the url to another browser, like firefox. Or better yet, try to paste it to another computer, I don't think it will work. The SID probably related to the cookies stored in your machine. Plus, PHPbb3 is still beta. They may fix this problem once they have released the final version. This email things can never work around MSN. I have tried many many headers, read other threads and they all say the same thing, can't get it work with MSN. I think we shaunrigby was right. But, if we need to register our mail server with MS's 'safe list', I assume that would take long time. We, on the other hand, can't block anybody with hotmail account from our website. We know that hotmail users are so many. I am one of them. Thanks guys!!!

Hi folks! I wonder how did they do this: www.msn.com There is a little box on middle left where you can click next / previous to show the news. This is not a flash movie, so I wonder if we can do it in PHP? Many thanks in advanced!!