Settings to Send an Email from Localhost for PHP Code in Windows Vista

PHPMailer, assuming we are talking about the same program, is not part of XAMPP (although I am not familiar enough to know if it's incl with WordPress, but I doubt it).

To install PHPMailer, you upload a few files to a folder on your web server (or in the document root, which in XAMPP is the htdocs folder). These files are important:

• class.phpmailer.php --> Necessary
  
• class.pop3.php --> Optional
  
• class.smtp.php --> Optional
  
• PHPMailerAutoload.php --> Useful
  

To load PHPMailer, you need a line like:

<?php
    require("class.phpmailer.php");

or

<?php
    require("PHPMailerAutoload.php");

You don't create email accounts in PHPMailer; you create them on your webserver (or other mail host, like google mail). Then you provide the email account login/password to PHPMailer in its instructions.

Here are some docs and tutorials for PHPMailer:

Tutorial from Apache

Installation Docs

Helpful Answer on SO <-- Also note the (accepted) answer immediately above this one

SMTP servers do not require authentication. Services like GMail, and my own servers, will require authentication, to send to users outside their domain. If you are sending within the intranet, it is unlikely you will require authentication.

There are minimal SMTP relay servers like SSMTP which are designed to send outgoing email without a full install. Full service servers like Exim, Postfix, and Sendmail can be configured to use a Smarthost (relay) for all outgoing mail. Usually, this would be the corporate mail server, or the ISPs relay server, neither of which is likely to require authentication. Either of these solutions would be appropriate.

Languages like PHP, Perl, and Java have packages which will connect directly to a remote SMTP server. This allows them to send email from hosts which don't have a mail server running. Normally, these would be configured to connect to a relay server as described above.

Ensure the sending address is appropriate. For something like this you may want to use an address in the form noreply@example.com. Use the client's domain in place of host. The client may prefer a different sending address. You may also want a Reply-To: address with the email address of someone who knows about the system, although that may need to be maintained over time.