PHPMailer FAQ

Q: I'm using the SMTP mailer and I keep on getting a timeout message + well before the X seconds I set it for. What gives?
+ A: PHP versions 4.0.4pl1 and earlier have a bug in which sockets timeout + early. You can fix this by re-compiling PHP 4.0.4pl1 with this fix: + timeoutfix.diff. Otherwise you can wait for the new PHP release.
Q: I am concerned that using include files will take up too much + processing time on my computer. How can I make it run faster?
+ A: PHP by itself is very fast. Much faster than ASP or JSP running on + the same type of server. This is because it has very little overhead compared + to its competitors and it pre-compiles all of + its code before it runs each script (in PHP4). However, all of + this compiling and re-compiling can take up a lot of valuable + computer resources. However, there are programs out there that compile + PHP code and store it in memory (or on mmaped files) to reduce the + processing immensely. Two of these: APC + (Alternative PHP Cache) and Afterburner + (Win32 download) + are excellent free tools that do just this. If you have the money + you might also try Zend Cache, it is + even faster than the open source varieties. All of these tools make your + scripts run faster while also reducing the load on your server. I have tried + them myself and they are quite stable too.
Q: What mailer gives me the best performance?
+ A: On a single machine the sendmail (or Qmail) is fastest overall. + Next fastest is mail() to give you the best performance. Both do not have the overhead of SMTP. + If you have you have your mail server on a another machine then + SMTP is your only option, but you do get the benefit of redundant mail servers.
+ If you are running a mailing list with thousands of names, the fastest mailers in order are: SMTP, sendmail (or Qmail), mail().
Q: When I try to attach a file with on my server I get a + "Could not find {file} on filesystem error". Why is this?
+ A: If you are using a Unix machine this is probably because the user + running your web server does not have read access to the directory in question. If you are using Windows, + then the problem probably is that you have used single backslashes to denote directories (\). + A single backslash has a special meaning to PHP so these are not + valid. Instead use double backslashes ("\\") or a single forward + slash ("/").

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