If you are required to test the functionality of PHP mail in your projects, which is without having to use external mail server, you can try these steps which will allow you to send and open emails locally. I assume you are running XAMPP server on your computer, it should work fine with WampServer too without any configuration.

PHP exec() function is usually disabled in most shared web hosting servers because of security reasons, but if your host allows this or you are on VPS or dedicated server, you should be able to use exec commands to backup your website or mysql database. Before you start, using code below check whether exec is enabled, if it fails you should ask your host to make sure it is even allowed!

To simplify things I created a simple Payment System with PayPal REST API in my previous post. But today I want to extend that tutorial making it bit complex and allowing customers to either pay with PayPal payment method or credit cards directly. Yes PayPal allows people to pay for your products directly using credit cards, which requires absolutely no user sign-in or sign-ups with PayPal.

Everyone’s been really excited about PayPal REST API since its launch, so I decided to try and explore PayPal’s new RESTful web service. And after playing a bit with it, I was able to create my own simple online cell phone store successfully. Here’s how!