Mailserver simulation for contact form on website

Question

I realize that I need to use a mailserver so people can contact me, my question is, how can I set one up on my local machine so I can test it?

I have XAMPP installed with PHPMyAdmin and I'm just toying and learning with it.

Now, in my PRODUCTION server, what email should I use to send users comments to me? I'm really new and need some guidance.

Answer 1

Generally I don't recommend you setting up a mailserver on your local machine just for testing.

Check out the PHP function mail(), it should be already configured and ready to run on the production server.

If you want to test if your script works, simply print out the arguments you would pass to mail().

Answer 2

Assuming your production server is running linux, you can use the sendmail binary or local smtp.