body of my message."); ?>

Replace "billg@microsoft.com" with your actual e-mail address, but be *sure* to keep quotes around it. Save it, and upload mailtest.php to your web server and run it in browser. You should see a blank page. Wait a few minutes and check your mail. You should see a mysterious mail message in your box with subject "Hello" and message "Hi. This is body of my message."

If you're using a free e-mail service or a weird ISP, message won't come through because a lot of mail servers these days require that certain headers are present in message.

Let's do that now.

What's below isn't important enough to explain thoroughly, but it's just header information that is interpreted by mail server. This data tells us that we're sending a plain text e-mail, that message came from your e-mail address (and gives your name), and tells us that e-mail "client" we used was PHP.

$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: $myname <$mymail> Reply-To: <$mymail> Return-Path: <$mymail> X-Mailer: PHP";

This is code you should have by this point, complete with header information and variables which tell script what your name and e-mail address are:

$email = "billg@microsoft.com";

$myname = "Your Name Here"; $mymail = "your@email.here";

$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: $myname <$mymail> Reply-To: <$mymail> Return-Path: <$mymail> X-Mailer: PHP";

mail($email,"Hello","Hi. This is body of my message.",$headers);

?>

Notice how we've simplified things a bit by using variables in mail() function. That way we don't have to retype things. This method also looks better (in my opinion anyway) and is easier to tweak once you're ready to actually customize it for yourself.

Try this out again. Believe it or not, but you just made your first autoresponder! Before we move on let's make this look even cleaner:

$myname = "Your Name Here"; $mymail = "your@email.here";

$subject = "Hello"; $body = "Hi. This is body of my message. Notice how I can continue typing right on next line!";

$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: $myname <$mymail> Reply-To: <$mymail> Return-Path: <$mymail> X-Mailer: PHP";

if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); }

?>

All I did here was just make things look nicer, but notice how I removed line that set $email to "billg@microsoft.com." This is because value of $email will be passed to script from that form we made earlier.

This also sends e-mail message ONLY if value of $email is not blank. So if someone just hit submit button without entering an address, script won't try to send e-mail message.

Everything should be ready for you to try out now. Re-upload "some-script.php" and go to signup.html. Enter your e-mail address in field, hit submit and wait for that mail message to arrive.

There's only one step left to making this autoresponder complete. And that's sending user somewhere so they aren't given a blank page.

Find this line in your script: if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); }

And paste this directly underneath it: header("Location:http://www.jumpx.com"); die();

Try autoresponder out. You'll see that once autoresponse message is sent, you're directed to www.jumpx.com. Now, go ahead and change it to whatever URL you want to use. Or, make use it with a variable so end result is like this:

$myredirect = "http://www.my-domain-name.com hankyou.html";

$myname = "Your Name Here"; $mymail = "your@email.here";

$subject = "Hello"; $body = "Hi. This is body of my message. Notice how I can continue typing right on next line!";

$headers = "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: $myname <$mymail> Reply-To: <$mymail> Return-Path: <$mymail> X-Mailer: PHP";

if ($email != "") { mail($email,$subject,$body,$headers); } header("Location:$myredirect"); die();

?>

Don't forget to change values above. "http://www.my-domain-name.com hankyou.html" needs to point to URL where thankyou.html is stored.

You're done. Don't forget to send John feedback for me. If you're really curious as to how to do something in PHP, I might just write an article on it.

Article by Robert Plank PHP Newsletter: http://www.jumpx.com/newsletter

If you want to take next step, go back to your code and change "myusername" and "mypassword" to a username and password of your choice. Upload it back to your web server and try again. Now go to that page again and you'll see that you can only be let in using username and password you chose for yourself.

Now change part that says "My Protected Area" to something else, say "John Calder's Bar and Grill." Upload and try it. You'll see when that password box comes up under "Realm" it'll say "John Calder's Bar and Grill." You can change this to whatever you like.

But what if you want to password protect just a handful of files? Do you have to copy and paste this code onto PHP script after PHP script?

Hell no!

Take code you just modified and take last line out of it. You know, one that said "my main text." All you should have in there now is everything in between PHP brackets ().

Save this file as "auth.php". You can rename this later, on your own time.

Make a new file called "test.php" or just rename one of your normal HTML to this name. It doesn't matter. At very top of test.php (the VERY top, meaning first line) copy and paste this line of code:

Upload auth.php and test.php to your web server and run test.php. Make sure both files are placed in same folder. Now, try to go to test.php in your web browser. You'll see that you can't get to test.php without right username and password. You can do this to any file with a ".php" extension just by adding that one line of code.

The catch to it is that this line of code has to be at very top of file. On very first line. The reason for this is that when script asks for a person's username and password, these are sent using HTTP headers and *must* come before anything else.

Of course, this doesn't take care of your secret sites or private members' areas, where you have to deal with several logins, but that's what htaccess is for.

While we're on subject of includes, one last thing before we finish up.

Includes are basically a way of absorbing other files into your script. As you saw when we included auth.php, script read everything that was in auth.php and used it as if contents of that file were actually there. This works with not only PHP scripts but also with other files as well.

Make a new file called "header.html". Put anything you want in it, but I just put "This is my header " when I did it.

Make a second file called "footer.html". Again, go again and put anything you want in it, but I just put "This is my footer " in.

Make a third file called "main.php." Copy following into it.

This is my main page

Upload all three into same folder and run main.php. You should see following:

This is my header This is my main page This is my footer

This is just a basic example of how includes can be used. But if you have a web site with several pages and same layout... wouldn't it be easier just to put everything above your main text in header.html and everything below that main text in footer.html? That way if you change your design you only have to edit 2 files instead of 100 or 200?

You'd think.

Article by Robert Plank