PHPMailer: "Could not connect to SMTP host"

Question

$email_message = "Form details below.\n\n";

function clean_string($string) {
    $bad = array("content-type","bcc:","to:","cc:","href");
    return str_replace($bad,"",$string);
}

$email_message .= "Full Name: ".clean_string($_POST['full_name'])."\n";
$email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($_POST['email'])."\n";
$email_message .= "Telephone number: ".clean_string($_POST['telephone'])."\n";
$email_message .= "Message: ".clean_string($_POST['comments'])."\n";


$mail             = new PHPMailer();
$body             = $email_message;
$body             = str_replace('\\', '', $body);

$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->SMTPAuth   = true;             // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl";            // sets the prefix to the servier
$mail->Host       = "smtp.gmail.com"; // sets GMAIL as the SMTP server
$mail->Port       = 465;              // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
$mail->Username   = "xxx@gmail.com";  // GMAIL username
$mail->Password   = "XXXXXX";         // GMAIL password

$mail->SetFrom('from-email@domain.com', 'First Last');

$mail->Subject    = "Imperia";

$mail->AltBody    =                   // optional, comment out and test
    "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!";

$mail->MsgHTML($body);

$address = "xxx@gmail.com";
$mail->AddAddress($address, "To Name");

if(!$mail->Send()) {

    echo "<font color='red'> Message error </font>". $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
    echo "<font color='red'> Message sent </font>";
} 

I am using this code to try to send email using SMTP, but I have an error:

SMTP Error: Could not connect to SMTP host

Could anyone tell me what is wrong here? I can't find a way to fix this. Thanks

Answer 1

$mailer->Host = 'ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465';