Add information about email in the Drupal requirements page

I'll take a look at this. Not sure if I can edit the page, but will gather the requirements here.

- sendmail installed on server. Specific version requirements?
- php.ini configured properly. Do we want to explain those configs here, or refer to an external source, like: this?

I think that's it. I assume there's no other Drupal specific settings apart from PHP requirements for using the mail function. Can someone confirm?

A lot of servers have sendmail locked down (I had mine turned off after getting blacklisted a couple of years ago, just in case).

Probably should be some mention of the SMTP module as an alternative.

Ok, I am not getting much more than this. I would say that the server needs sendmail, and the webserver needs access to it. The PHP .ini file needs to be configured properly, which you could get from the link I provided above.

tagging so maybe the server adminish people will catch

What about this. We add a reference to the [mail function] section in php.ini in the documentation as mentioned below, keep in mind that all php.ini files already have this information by default. If they have trouble sending out emails then we should be sure to have SENDMAIL help in our troubleshooting section of the site.

Thoughts?

[mail function]
; For Win32 only.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/mail.configuration.php#ini.smtp
SMTP = localhost
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/mail.configuration.php#ini.smtp-port
smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.; http://www.php.net/manual/en/mail.configuration.php#ini.sendmail-from
;sendmail_from = me@example.com
; For Unix only. You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/mail.configuration.php#ini.sendmail-path
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

tagging for more visibility

I have written up some changes for the requirements page.

Since I do not have edit access to this page is there xml file of just the content I can get to make a patch against?

We don't make patches for doc pages. Just put what you have here (or attach it as a file) and someone with the needed permissions can add it to the page.

This revision adds information about the email prerequisites (Mail Transfer Agent) to the requirements page.

Furthermore I changed the layout of the content to be categorized by operating system and drupal version. I added information about MacOS X, FreeBSD, and Linux server options.

I addressed another bug in part by adding Posgresql database limitation information. http://drupal.org/node/765914

I still think the requirements page will need a little more layout work after this.

Hmmm... I started looking at this revision, but ran into difficulties:

1) I guess the starting point was the rendered page rather than the node body value, so there were a lot of changes that aren't really meaningful.

2) The current page has a list of links near the top that take you down the page. Those have been removed, and I'm not sure why -- I would think they would be useful, so I don't think they should have been removed?

That's as far as I got... I'll leave the full review to someone else...

Here's the existing page's node body, if anyone who does not have edit permissions on the page would like to use it as a starting point.

Use the proper markup from comment #12 I have created a new revision of the requirements page.

This revision updates the requirements page with information about Postgresql, apache, php, nginx, lighttpd, Apple OSX, FreeBSD, MS Windows and Linux. In addition, layout changes were made to group like information together and to make it easier for the end user to scan the page.

Is there a place where we can create and delete test pages on drupal.org for testing it with the proper theme?

You can create a Book node, and use the Preview to look at it -- as long as you don't save, you should be fine. The only difference is that it will have a yellow preview background.

Then I could take a screenshot and post that to an issue if necessary.

I am going to find the correct place in the documentation and add a note about preview and screenshot a node.

Once again thanks for the idea jhodgdon.

I have a few comments that I think need to be addressed before I would go with the changes in comment #13 above:

a) Icons - all of the images used in the tables need to have alt attributes on them, so that non-sighted users can still use the page.

b) Bullet list at the top - previously, the individual bullet items started with a capital letter. Why did that get changed? At least in API docs, starting each list bullet with a capital letter is the standard; not sure if it's a standard for d.o or not, but personally I would prefer it.

c) Actually, I'm not sure why any of the changes were made in that list. For instance, it used to say "Web server (e.g., Apache)" and now it says just "web server". Keep in mind that some Drupal users are not web professionals. In fact, the vast majority aren't. So let's leave those clarifications in there.

d) There are some copy edits needed, such as comma splice here:
Drupal has been deployed successfully on both Apache and IIS, lighttpd and nginx have been reported to work.
(should be a semi-colon or have a conjunction)

e) Generally be careful about capitalization. For instance, I'm pretty sure "Apache" should be capitalized everywhere, and in your version it is inconsistent.

That's all I saw in a few minutes of looking... A good start, but ...

f) Maybe we can limit this issue to adding information about email, and leave the larger changes for a separate issue?

PHP requirements are reported on PHP requirements and Drupal 7 PHP requirements.

The file attached on comment #13 is outdated, now, since there are parts of that page that have been already changed. It would be better to show in the issue summary the text that should be added to those documentation guides, which should go in PHP requirements / PHP configuration settings.

For Drupal 7, PHP requirements / Summary of the required settings in the php.ini file shows a list of the settings Drupal requires. Settings for sending emails should go there too, apart from being listed in the previous sections.