Cookbook contact form and PHP Mailer

The CMS Questions
1

Hi,

I have set up a new website with Kirby 4 and all is well, except for the contact form is not sending anything. This may be an issue on the server end. The hosting people are suggesting I use PHP Mailer. I am using the contact form from the Cookbook recipe. Does that use PHP Mailer?

Thank you.

2

Without knowing the code of your installation, I can only give you general solution suggestions.

3

If you don’t configure SMTP settings in your config, sendmail (a command line utility) is used, which often fails, for some backgrounds, see the explanations here: Sending email with or without SMTP configuration? - #6 by rasteiner

KIrby uses a wrapper around PHPMailer, but using PHPMailer does not automatically mean that you use SMTP, if you don’t configure it. So that’s probably what the support wanted to suggest.

4

I get a message saying the mail function can’t be instantiated.

5

How do I configure the SMTP settings in my config file?

6

@GB_DESIGN posted the link to the docs above…

As for the settings, see the documentation of your provider.

7

Great. I’ll try that.
Thank you.

8

Tried the config thing, and I am getting a white screen. Added the email section as instructed in the docs.

9

Can you post the code from your confiq.php here?
Please replace personal details with placeholders :sunglasses:

Have you activated the debug mode? This will show you/us relevant information:

10

Here it is:

<?php 
return [
	'debug' => true,
	'email' => [
		'transport' => [
			'type' => 'smtp',
			'host' => 'smtp.34sp.com',
			'port' = 465,
			'security' => true
    	]
    ],
	'routes' => [
		[
			'pattern' => 'sitemap.xml',
			'action' => function() {
				$pages = site()->pages()->index();
				$ignore = kirby()->option('sitemap.ignore', ['error']);
				$content = snippet('sitemap/sitemap_xml', compact('pages', 'ignore'), true);
				return new Kirby\Cms\Response($content, 'application/xml');
			}
		],
	],
	'sitemap.ignore' => ['error'],
];
?>

Debug mode is on, but it’s not giving anything. With the email bit in the config file the screen is just blank.

11

I have found a syntax error that should be responsible for the empty page:
There is a missing >
'port' => 465,

If you still don’t receive an e-mail, you can make the following change:

instead of security' => true
you can also try the following:
security' => 'ssl' or
security' => 'tls'

Setting ‘security’ to ‘ssl’ or ‘tls’ is clear and specifies exactly which security protocols are used. ‘true’, on the other hand, is vague and could have different meanings depending on the implementation. I once had a case where my provider could only cope with a clear specification.

12

Ha, that thing were you stop seeing the obvious :grinning:
Thank you.

No longer a blank page, but now I am getting a message to say SMTP has been disabled. I think some of this may be related to a DNS propagation issue with the domain that may not be sorted by tomorrow.

Won’t be able to look into it until Monday/Tuesday now, but thank you for your help. I got a little bit closer to a solution.

Joke

13

Finally made this work.
Had to use email transport with authentication:

	'email' => [
		'transport' => [
			'type' => 'smtp',
			'host' => '***',
			'port' => 465,
			'security' => 'ssl',
			'auth' => true,
		    'username' => '***,
		    'password' => '***'
    	]
    ],

With the *** replaced with proper stuff.

Thank you both for the help.