PHPMailer not working in XAMPP

Question

So I've tried a couple of things but it I'm just unable to send a mail from php on my XAMPP server. I'm using OSX Yosemite and in terminal I can mail to the local mail client which I've setup and also to my external mail. I even switched to Netbeans IDE and tried the code in it's built in php server which worked but on my xampp server it just doesn't send. I've been trying to use PHPMailer send an email but it doesn't seem to work everything seems fine.

    $mail->IsSMTP(); // enable SMTP
    $mail->SMTPDebug = 3; // debugging: 1 = errors and messages, 2 = messages only
    $mail->SMTPAuth = true; // authentication enabled
    $mail->SMTPSecure = 'ssl'; // secure transfer enabled REQUIRED for GMail
    $mail->Host = "HOST_ADDRESS";
    $mail->Port = 465; // or 587
    $mail->IsHTML(true);
    $mail->Username = "HOST_USER";
    $mail->Password = "HOST_PASSWORD";
    $mail->SetFrom("donotreply@webgroup.com", "Account Confirmation");
    $mail->Subject = $subject;
    $mail->Body = $email_body;
    $mail->AddAddress($address);

Whenever I send a mail I get this error:

SMTP Failed to connect to server(0)

Any help? Have been trying to figure this out for hours now

Answer 1

Configure SMTP Server first to send the email. SMTP configuration is necessary to work the mail function.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/php/php_sending_emails.htm

Answer 2

See my sample in Can't get PHPMailer working

Your $mail->Host = "HOST_ADDRESS"; needs to be specified, or just use "smtp"