mailing with php

We hate it when things are more difficult than they should be. (And who is to gauge how difficult it should be? We should!)

That's how it was in our latest struggle through the Great App that will Solve all Problems (GASP). One of the last things we chose to implement in the GASP is a mailto function that will mail an internal user when an external user does something. Sounds easy, yes? And in fact, it is. But it took us a while to get there. Because we learn everything the hard way.

So to keep anyone else from going through the crap we went through: make sure the server you are working on will send out mail before you go nuts trying to make it work. That might seem obvious to others. But remember: we learn things the hard way. Having an external, private server can help immensely on this. Before you fuss about scripts that don't work, test them on a server you know is good.

So what did we use, what did we learn? Mailing something in php is a snap. Just use the mail() function. Do not listen to all the other crap out there about needing x number of files to get shit done. Use the friggin mail() function. It goes mail($to, $subject, $message).

That said, the Surreal-Atmosphere tutorial was very helpful. So thank you for taking apart a small script and kicking it around until it made sense.

Many people apparantly found the emailform.php script very useful. That may be. We did not. We also did not find Jack's FormMail.php useful. But both of these failures were, most likely, due to the server we were developing on.

Lastly, if you need more features in mailing, you might want to check out PHPMailer on sourceforge. They seem like there's a lot there to work with. And they have docs, which makes our cold blackened hearts happy. 

harassment takes a back burner

So it seems that the whole Winnie Pooh stuff has gone away. We can only hope.

The Taquito is on the way soon. We've been thinking a lot about home movies recently. While we don't have a fancy shmancy movie camera, we do have a small camera that will take clips, and we can take still pictures like a muthatrucker. So what we need is editing. We have been really interested in Jahshaka, the open source movie editing software. But then recently, we've been seeing some free online tools. Eyespot is one such online editor. Jumpcut is another. We haven't tested any of these, but we are willing to check them out.

Another big thing we have been seeing a lot of online talk about it Firefox extensions. Now, we love ourselves some Firefox extensions. And we are aghast to find that SessionSaver is a veritable memory sieve. We've been wondering where our memory has been going (and no, this has nothing to do with the parking lot at the slam). TabMixPlus is supposed to be an excellent replacement for SessionSaver, with a whole bunch of tabbing and memory saving built in. W00t! Plus, our good buddies at lifehacker have been putting together some interesting Firefox extension packages. We're excited about those, too. And lastly, this might be our favorite extension since "Open all linked pictures in new window": DownThemAll! This little bugger downloads everything off a site. It's like pictures and sitesucker all in one. Neat!

Now here are some things we might classify under web design and general design. Firstly is an AJAX-enabled color themer: Color Tool 2.0.1. We've used lots of themers before and this one is nice, too. Next is an awesome gallery of classic arcade artwork. One of our earliest calls to the world of design was the come-on in the darkness of the Bunny Hutch and Corbin Bowl arcades. Wait, rephrase. Oh, nevermind. Behold: The Arcade Art Library! Now granted, we've never Varkon in our lives, but damn, that's some great sideart. And lastly, there is EveryStockPhoto.com. This site collects Creative Commons licensed pictures and allows you to use them at your whims. Nice.

If you've been following our trevails in this blog, you'll know that we have some serious-ass networking issues. We've tried a lot, but we're always willing to try more. We're hoping Network Magic won't bite up in the ass. Yet another software package that promises to make networking easier, file and printer sharing a snap, and etc., etc., etc. And then there's Vyew, which promises easy web conferencing. Though when they require Flash updates and recommend IE and Java, we wonder at how much we would really use the damn thing to begin with.

2 more that we can't leave without telling you about. First is a nifty Ray Carver site we found, and it includes a few (3) audio snippets of Ray laughing. Joy. Pure joy. PinkDome is a local lefty news & politics site our friend Gen tipped us to. So far, we haven't been greatly offended.