A useful class for sending emails through PHP using an SMTP connection can be found at http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/. This class provides a robust and flexible alternative to the inbuilt PHP mail() function which has several limitations.

With the PHPMailer class you can send plain text or HTML emails, attach files to your emails, and send emails to multiple recipients. The class supports multiple TO, CC, BCC and REPLY-TO values.

Hope you find this useful! Back with more useful stuff soon...