Can't get activation email to work with Ion Auth...

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
I've nearly finished with a website, I just need to get authentication stuff up and running but I am facing a problem. I've got root/application/config/ion_auth.php necessary parts sset up:

Code:

$config['email_activation']           = TRUE;
$config['use_ci_email'] = TRUE;

And as per Codeiginter documentation I've created root/application/config/email.php with the following contents:

Code:

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

/*
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Email
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------
| This file lets you define parameters for sending emails.
| Please see the user guide for info:
|
| http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/libraries/email.html
|
*/
$config['protocol']='smtp';
$config['smtp_host']='ssl://smtp.gmail.com.'; //(SMTP server)
$config['smtp_port']='465'; //(SMTP port)
$config['smtp_timeout']='30';
$config['smtp_user']='[email protected]'; //([email protected])
$config['smtp_pass']='password'; // (gmail password)
$config['mailtype'] = 'html';
$config['charset'] = 'utf-8';
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";


/* End of file email.php */
/* Location: ./application/config/email.php */

However when I try and sign up I get the form error:

Unable to Send Activation Email

And about a dozen of the following errors:

Code:

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fwrite() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given

Filename: libraries/Email.php

Line Number: 1846

I'm pretty sure this is because I haven't got SSL on my server, and gmail requires SSL to work (I've tried without the ssl://) but I just want to be sure before I go ahead getting a dedicated IP and buying an SSL cert that no one else has had this problem. It would also be great to have a way to test sign up functionality without having to go through the bother of setting up SSL, are there any email clients that I can test without SSL?

Thanks all!