This section provides a tutorial example on how to setup your local Windows system to use IIS (Internet Information Services) as a SMTP mail server.
PHP provides us a nice built-in function, mail(), that allows us to send emails over the Internet.
But it requires a SMTP mail server that the mail() function can communicate with.
If you don't have a service provider who provides you the SMTP mail service,
you can set up your local system as a SMTP mail server to test mail().
If you are running a Linux/Unix system, setting up a mail server is easy. Just run sendmail
as a daemon.
If you are running a Windows system, setting up a mail server is a little bit harder.
But if IIS (Internet Information Services) is running on your system, it also provides SMTP services.
Here is how you can check this:
1. Go to Control Panel / Services, and make sure Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is running.
2. Open a command window, and run the following command:
>telnet localhost 25
220 localhost Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.2600.1106...
help
214-This server supports the following commands:
214 HELO EHLO STARTTLS RCPT DATA RSET MAIL QUIT HELP AUTH BDAT VRFY
quit
221 2.0.0 localhost Service closing transmission channel
If you got similar outputs as above, your IIS is running as SMTP mail server correctly.
