PHP mailer setfrom not working in cpanel hosting.

Question

Hi there

I hope someone can help me, i have been wasting hours trying to get this working. So lets try Treehouse :P

I am doing a website for a client and it is almost complete. I have a contact form that requires name. email and message and the details sent to the specified email address.

So I tried phpmailer and it works well to some extent. First address I tried to use was a gmail address and apparently you can't display the FROM (sender) address. I tried in cpanel. created the email account, but not working.

I can receive mails, if the email account created in cpanel is in the setFrom function . When I change this to $email I dont get an error message but never receive the mail.

I provided the php code below as well as the contact form

I would really appreciate help, might be a mistake I make but I spent hours copying code, watching videos, reading up but got this far, now I am stuck.

<?php $msg = ""; use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer; include_once "PHPMailer/PHPMailer.php"; include_once "PHPMailer/Exception.php"; include_once "PHPMailer/SMTP.php";

if (isset($_POST['submit'])) {
    $subject = $_POST['subject'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $message = $_POST['message'];

    if (isset($_FILES['attachment']['name']) && $_FILES['attachment']['name'] != "") {
        $file = "attachment/" . basename($_FILES['attachment']['name']);
        move_uploaded_file($_FILES['attachment']['tmp_name'], $file);
    } else
        $file = "";
    require 'PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
    $mail = new PHPMailer();

    //if we want to send via SMTP
    $mail->Host = "hostserver address"; //cpanel gave details
    $mail->isSMTP();
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
    $mail->Username = "example@mail.co.za";// I fill my address here ( I created this one in cpanel)
    $mail->Password = "mypass";
    $mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl"; //TLS
    $mail->Port = 465; //587
    $mail->setFrom('$email'); //my problem when I use example@mail.co.za it works fine, I receive mail but not when I change this to $email
    // $mail->Sender = $email;
    // $mail->addCustomHeader('Sender', 'ACME <noreply@example.com>');
    $mail->addAddress('client email address, gmail);
    $mail->AddReplyTo($email, '$subject');

    $mail->Subject = $subject;
    $mail->isHTML(true);
    $mail->Body = $message;

// $mail->addAttachment($file);

    if ($mail->send())
        $msg = "Your email has been sent, thank you!";
    else
        $msg = "Please try again!";

    unlink($file);
}

CONTACT FORM

<div class="container-fluid contactBg" style="margin-top: 100px" id="ContactForm">
    <div class="row justify-content-center">
        <div class="container contacts">
        <div class="col-md-6 col-md-12" align="center">
            <img src="img/contact.png" width="250px;" height="auto" class="img-fluid animated bounce contactlogo"><br><br>
                <h2>Contact us</h2>

            <?php if ($msg != "") echo "$msg<br><br>"; ?>

            <form method="post" action="index.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
                <input class="form-control" name="subject" placeholder="Full Name..."><br>
                <input class="form-control" name="email" type="email" placeholder="Email..."><br>
                <textarea placeholder="Message..." class="form-control texta" name="message"></textarea><br>
                <!--<input class="form-control" type="file" name="attachment"><br>-->
                <input class="btn btn-primary" name="submit" type="submit" value="Send Email">
            </form>
        </div>
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-2 col-md-12 inquire contacts text-center">
         <p>For inquiries or support, please send us a message and we'll get back to you shortly.</p>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>



<!--    END CONTACT FORM-->

Answer 1 · 2018-02-05T21:16:26Z

February 5, 2018 9:16pm

In PHP single-quotes are more strict compared to double-quotes:

$firstName = "Henrik";
echo 'Hello $firstName'; // prints 'Hello $firstName'
echo "Hello $firstName"; // prints 'Hello Henrik'

I think this is what's causing you this problem, because in your $mail->setFrom('$email'); you use single-quotes and that makes PHPMailer think that you mean the email is from the address $email and not the actually value of the variable $email.

Try use double-quotes instead, and see if that will fix your problem

// try this
$mail->setFrom("$email");
// instead of
$mail->setFrom('$email');

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Michael-George Walton

Michael-George Walton

PHP mailer setfrom not working in cpanel hosting.

1 Answer

Henrik Christensen

Henrik Christensen

Michael-George Walton

Michael-George Walton