Manual:$wgEnableEmail

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Email settings: $wgEnableEmail
Set to true to enable basic email features.
Introduced in version:	1.4.0
Removed in version:	Still in use
Allowed values:	(boolean)
Default value:	`true`
Other settings: Alphabetical \| By function

Details

Set to true to enable the basic email features: Password reminders, etc.

See Manual:$wgSMTP for information on how to configure the sending of email.

If sending email on the server doesn't work, check the Troubleshooting instructions.

Local mail transfer agent software

MediaWiki email is almost certainly not going to work out-of-the-box on Windows servers, and it may require additional configuration on Linux servers. To send mail from your local server, a functional configuration of a message transfer agent (MTA) is required. Common local mail transfer agent software for sending messages on Linux systems are Postfix, Sendmail, or Exim.

Once a local mail transfer agent is installed, you must set the sendmail_path variable in the file php.ini to point to the correct executable file of your mail server software. See the PHP documentation.

External email providers

Alternatively you can use $wgSMTP to connect MediaWiki to an external email provider to send mail (for example Google Gmail).

Hosting providers

Some hosting providers (for example Hostmonster) appear to check that the "From:" and "Return-Path:" are genuine, to prevent spammers from using their accounts.

Find out what the correct sender is, e.g. by visiting a PHP page containing the following code and checking the email that you receive:

<?php
mail("my.private.address@example.com","My subject","My message body");
?>

Let's assume the email at the previous point came through from "exampleAccountName@myHost.example.com". Change the following variables in LocalSettings.php:

$wgEmergencyContact = "exampleAccountName@myHost.example.com";
$wgPasswordSender   = "exampleAccountName@myHost.example.com";

Disable email

To disable email, in LocalSettings.php, change the default:

$wgEnableEmail = true;

to

$wgEnableEmail = false;