Sending Email using both HTML and plain text

Question

I could use some advise on how to start researching email for
both HTML and plain text messages.
I have a script called class.phpMail.php, but the code is
alittle advanced for me. Basically I can't get
it to work on my server and I don't know where to begin the
learning process here.
I talked to my provider, "HOST" company goDaddy.com and I was
told that to connect so that I could send email I would need this
line of code. They didn't say it should by in my php.ini file but
that was where I found it.
SMTP = relay-hosting.secureserver.net
This is the smtp address that my provider uses to make the
connection with my mail client.
I was told that with this line of code I would not need a
password or username
I did some further reseach and I found an article that stated
that my original error:
Warning: fsockopen() expects parameter 2 to be long, string
given in ...../php/class.smtp.php on line 105
was being caused by this code because the $port value needed
to be between 1 - 65365:
$this->smtp_conn = fsockopen($host, # the host of the server
$port, # the port to use ----- "this is line 105"
$errno, # error number if any
$errstr, # error message if any
$tval); # give up after ? secs
In particular the $port value was coming in corrupted and
that I needed to cast it.
I did as they suggested and made it an (int) as they
suggested.
$this->smtp_conn = fsockopen($host, # the host of the server
(int)$port, # the port to use
$errno, # error number if any
$errstr, # error message if any
$tval); # give up after ? secs
It resolved part of the error message however, the other half
of the error message is shown below:
Message could not be sent.
Mailer Error: Language string failed to load: connect_host
What exactly is the connect_host they refer to in this
message?
Would it be the string in my php.ini file refering to the
SMTP = relay-hosting.secureserver.net
I have allot of what I think are disconnected questions as I
really have just begun to work
with the mail() function. If anyone has the time to educate
this newbie into the wonderful
world of email() I would appreciate it.
Thank You
Kevin Raleigh

Answer 1

Sorry to dig up an old post, but we've spent the last few days trying to work out why an email campaign being sent from BC is going into the Junk folder of recipients that use MS Exchange. We've fixed quite a lot of issues, including the fact that Legacy Templates have random JS injected just before they get sent, so we had to switch to the new template system. We've narrowed the issue down to one of three things:
1. A missing alt tag on the tracking image that BC drops into the email (pretty unlikely)
2. The BC Europe IP (54.240.14.45) is blacklisted here: UCEPROTECTL2 (possible, but if you actually look it's not the IP itself, but another IP on the same network, so unlikely)
3. The fact that the HTML email has no text component.
I agree, BC is late on this but I think that it needs to be added, even if most users have HTML-ready email clients, spam checkers do seem to prefer multi-MIME emails.
This is backed up by the following SpamAssassin rule, which we are currently unable to resolve:
-1.105
MIME_HTML_ONLY
Message only has text/html MIME parts
You should also include a text version of your message (text/plain)
So in my opinion, BC do still need to add this as a feature, otherwise the system is not viable for our customers and we'll have to look elsewhere.