php mail

[portia]

It's probably a daft question but I'm a newbie:

I've been reading a tutorial about sending mail through php:

http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/php/5

 

It explains how to send mail:

 

$to = "php@gowansnet.com";
$subject = "PHP Is Great";
$body = "PHP is one of the best scripting languages around";
$headers = "From: webmaster@gowansnet.com\n";
mail($to,$subject,$body,$headers);
echo "Mail sent to $to";

 

My question is do I need to configure sendmail, postfix (I'm using linux) stmp, etc to be able to do it, or php itself handles it?

thanks

[ignace]

php uses smtp to send e-mail. However it is possible to send e-mails from php using your gmail, hotmail, yahoo account.

 

http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/package/9/post/1-Sending-email-using-SMTP-servers-of-Gmail-Hotmail-or-Yahoo-with-PHP.html