About Mail with PHP

Hi first time here, how are u all?

And a lot of question hehehe

1. I have been learning php for 1 years, and now I want to learn mail() function in php. Anyone know where to start? I don't have any mail server now (which one is the best)? After installing mail server how to use it with php?
2. For learning purpose : can we create a simple mail for LAN? (intranet) so every people in that intranet can send and receive mail? (better if people can send mail to outside too ).
3. How to create an text area like this (this posting form). I can directly put a smilie into my textarea like this , for long time I only use some special chars like "" (for smilie) then convert it into an image after post.

I am Sorry, english is not my default language, so my english is bad.

I very appreciate any answer, THANKS ALOT

yonscun

yonscun,

Welcome to the forums!

First off, the best place to learn about PHP's mail() function is directly from the PHP Manual: www.php.net/mail

As for the emoticons (smilies) and converting them, here's a nice tutorial by Havard Lindset that will have you on your way to converting smilies in no time! Have a read: Quick and Dirty Emoticons.

The best place to play with the mail function is right on your own Apache/PHP installation. I'm assuming you have a local copy of Apache/PHP installed on your machine... If so, you can send mail using your ISP's SMTP servers.

Hope that helps...

PS: Your English isn't bad at all...

Thanks FrankieShakes

I have read that tutorial and have a lot useful things. But still don't know how to create <textarea> (or something like that) which we can put smilies directly into it (and it's appear as an image not just text like ":" following with this char ")" for this "" image).

I have try to put image tag <img> into textarea but it failed.


yonscun

ps : www.php.net/mail just give me a login form without registration

I know you can create an html 'textarea' using javascript or some kind of applet but you can't just have a textarea that supports images sadly.

For the mail function try http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php as a starting point.

-KM-

I just want to learn how to create message area like this forum reply form. To make a string bold I just need to select it and klik BOLD button, where on other forum I usually forced to use and to make it bold.

Also we can insert image right to this form with out typing. where usually I must to type some chars like , :_(, T_T, X(.

Just....how to create this replay form?

yonscun, check out http://www.interactivetools.com/products/htmlarea/ for a nice WYSIWYG text area that'll probably do pretty much what you're looking for.

dhouston, thank you very much this is what I have looking for 4 month......thanks alot