Symphony.

Email sending functionalities can vary from server to server. Symphony 2.2 introduces a new email API that allows the use of different “gateways” for sending email.

The Symphony core includes two gateways, and more gateways can be installed using extensions. The core gateways are:

mail/Sendmail

This is the “traditional” way to send emails, using PHP’s mail() function and the server’s Sendmail socket. Symphony versions prior to 2.2 always used this.

SMTP

This allows the system to send emails using a remote SMTP server. This method is generally more reliable and can be especially helpful when mail/Sendmail is unavailable (e.g. on localhost, or on cloud setups).

Using Email Gateways

An “Email Gateway” section has been added to the System > Preferences page, allowing you to define:

• The email gateway you’d like the system to use when it sends email (i.e. when the send-email event option is triggers, or when a reset-password has been requested).
• The default sender name and sender address (these are no longer hardcoded in the core and can be changed at any time).
• Gateway-specific settings (visible as soon as you choose a gateway).

The gateway chosen here only applies to Symphony’s native email functionalities. Your own scripts can use any of the available gateways independent of this setting (developer documentation forthcoming [draft]).