Why won't wp_mail() let me set the From: header when plain old PHP mail() will?

Question

When I use wp_mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers ) (with values in place, of course), the email gets sent with a from name and email that isn't set anywhere I can find (not even in PHP or Apache settings). However, using mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers ) instead works just fine. What could be happening with wp_mail() to cause this?

Answer 1

Hi @helenyhou:

You can set the header, just not with a parameter. WordPress uses "hooks" and the hooks you need are 'wp_mail_from' and 'wp_mail_from_name' hooks.

Here are the hooks you might add to your theme's functions.php file to modify the "From:" header when using wp_mail() to the email address Helen Hou-Sandi <helenyhou@example.com>:

add_filter('wp_mail_from','yoursite_wp_mail_from');
function yoursite_wp_mail_from($content_type) {
  return 'helenyhou@example.com';
}
add_filter('wp_mail_from_name','yoursite_wp_mail_from_name');
function yoursite_wp_mail_from_name($name) {
  return 'Helen Hou-Sandi';
}

Answer 2

Well, if you're using the From: "Your Name" <youremail@example.com>\r\n format in your headers, you shouldn't be having a problem (unless you have a plugin installed which overrides the wp_mail function).

However, as Mike said, you can filter the ultimate values with those filters, or you can just install this plugin:

Send From

It'll give you an options setting to determine what name and email to use in wp_mail.

Answer 3

Sorry to revive an old question but isn't it better to set via the headers like so:

$subject  = "MyPlugin: Alert (".get_bloginfo('wpurl').")";
$headers  = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=".get_bloginfo('charset')."" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "From: MyPlugin <".$this->settings['from_address'].">" . "\r\n";
wp_mail($this->settings['notify_address'], $subject, $alertMessage, $headers);

That way you dont have to worry about using a filter and then removing at after wp_mail().