Use PHP and the HTTP protocol to send text-messages from your website through an SMS gateway.
By : Farheen Rehman
SMS (also known as text-messaging) has grown into a very popular method of communication. It has been around in Europe and Asia since the early nineties and its use is steadily increasing in the US as well.
SMS stands for "Short Message Service" and uses mobile phones to transmit (surprise, surprise) short messages to and from mobile phones and whilst many of us might not know this, it is also possible to send SMS messages from a website or a piece of software.
There are an infinite number of reasons why you might want to use your website to send SMS. You might want to add a "send by SMS" option to your headlines, for example, or you might want to provide 24/7 support in which your technician is alerted by SMS or you might simply want to provide your viewers with Free SMS to drive traffic to your site.
Although it is also possible to send SMS via e-mail, this tutorial will teach you how to send SMS using GET and POST HTTP methods in PHP (since it's the language I know).
For those of us that many not know this, using HTTP basically means the use of forms, just like a contact form, except that these will be submitted automatically as opposed to manually.
Although this tutorial can be used for any gateway that provides access via HTTP, it is based on TM4B's SMS Gateway because A) they are the only gateway I know that have a simulation mode for tweaking your scripts, B) they don't have any set-up fees, C) their prices are low, D) they are reliable and E) I use them.
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