How to send non-spam emails?

[paschim]

Well, first of all i am not sure if this should belong in this thread. If this is in wrong thread, mods please move it!

 

Now,

1) How do i send emails from my server so that they have less chance of ending up in the spam folder?

 

2) How much length should the varchar be, for the email subject?

 

3) How do i send the mail on a server where magic_quote_gpc is off? I mean, i can addslashes to the text, but when i tried sending a plain text email....the email was sent along with the slashes. And if i dont simulate magic_quotes_gpc, i am afraid that some characters like quotes may cause problems in processing the email! I really have no idea about this part!

 

4) What is the best way to put a banner/image in a html email?

[corbin]

1.  Make sure your domain records are all valid/correct, including an MX record.

 

2.  How long do you think the subject will ever be?  255 would be more than enough I would think.

 

3.  Errr?  I would have the text come in without slashes, and then just add slashes when needed, or use plain version when not needed.

 

4.  An img tag?

[448191]

Use Pear::Mail or Zend_Mail.

[paschim]

err how does using Zend mail exactly help in lowering the chances of the mail being termed as spam?

[tibberous]

My guess would be that it keeps you from screwing up the headers, which can get you marked with some servers.

 

Spam filtering varies a ton from company to company - my emails get through in gmail, marked as spam in yahoo. Gmail seems to put a lot of weight into marking emails as 'Not Spam', gmail is also accurate as hell.

 

 

[PFMaBiSmAd]

For question/answer #1, in addition to the domain records being correct and the mail server being configured correctly and without error, the mechanics (headers, to/from addresses) of the email must be correct, the mail server must not have previously been guilty of sending spam (from other accounts on a shared server), and the content of the subject and body must not be spam like.

 

One of the most common things that will get email voted as spam is the lack of an SPF DNS record at the domain in the From: address that says the sending mail server is authorized to send email for that domain.

[phpoet]

For help creating a valid SPF record, you can use this <a href="http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html">SPF Generator Form</a>

[paschim]

ok i somewhat understand now! Can you guys tell me, what type of measures should i take for a subject filter, and also what are the main filter checks of hotmail?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

All the major ISP's have a postmaster page that provides information for successfully sending them email - http://postmaster.hotmail.com/Default.aspx

 

These however don't lists specific spam keywords so as to not give spammers a way of getting spam to bypass the filters.

[JonnoTheDev]

For point 1 read this: http://www.swiftmailer.org/wikidocs/v3/tips/spam

[Wolphie]

I would strongly suggest using an existing mailing class, simply to make life easier. I always use this, it's free and easy-to-use and also allows SMTP. It will send the message in HTML or Plain Text depending on whether the client supports HTML or not.

 

http://phpmailer.codeworxtech.com/

 

[paschim]

thanks All! the guide from swiftmailer is really what i needed! thank you for sharing