Running mailservers SMTP and POP3?

Question

I'm trying to design a PHP page in dreamweaver so that I can test a message sent page. Basically, there will be some PHP code which directs an email message to my email client when I run that specific HTML page.

I'm having trouble understanding what I need to do this. I like to ask anyone who has experience ....

If fill a web form out(from my machine) and the results go to my email client (from my machine and if the code works) then would I need something like a mail server application?

Even if I install a mail server, do I still need SMTP and POP3 to send and receive on my computer?

So if I need to have SMTP and POP3 even if it for local use, will I need contact my ISP for 'settings' < I don't think so but I may be wrong here.

If I was to configure for local use would my settings be something like...

SMTP > smtp.localhost
POP3 > localhost

I sorry if this really technical, but I don't know anyone technical to talk to about this

Answer 1

YES... You need a mail server to send mail across the internet. If you setup your own or if your ISP allows you to relay thru there that would work. SMTP is the transport layer of the mail server POP3 is one of the protocols used. Then you need to setup your DNS to correctly tell others how to find you mail server which is where you use the SMTP = 198.162.1.1 or whatever the ip address is of the mail server.

An actual dns record would look something along these lines.

smtp A 192.168.1.1
pop3 A 192.168.1.1
or
pop3 CNAME 192.168.1.1

For a local connection

smtp A 127.0.0.1
pop3 A 127.0.0.1