php is not good enough?!

Anon

Hi all,

I want to add a web mail system to my site that my visitors can have their own e-mail acount user@mydomain.com.

U all know it's a huge progect, so I decided to look for a ready script to buy!
I wa dissapointed to find that only perl scripts exist for this aim! isn't php good enough to puild such a system? anyone know where can I buy a good one writen in php?

Thanx

cordex

Have you looked through:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/snippet/browse.php?by=cat&cat=14
yet?

PHP is fully capable of providing the service you desire. If you really need this immediately and can't find what you need elsewhere, you can always hire someone to build it for you. That won't be cheap, but it can be more specific for you.

-Ben

Anon

PHp not good enough!?!?! try searching for php and mail. Here are a few:

IMP http://www.horde.org/imp/
Areomail http://cushman.net/projects/aeromail/index.php

and here are another 40

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Email_Systems/Web-based_Email/

You can add mine up there when i am done with it this summer. (hopefully). By the way, most of all are Free!! Opensource is like that. It still amazes me that people pay for software. :-D

Add this and a little backend procmail or qmail, and create Virtual accounts where people can register for there own without a login account. (If you want this option you might have to tweek the config files in some of these programs, but you would have to do that anyway)

Hope that Helps!

Anon

Nashirak,
thanx for your reply, but all scripts on hotscripts are e-mail readers only!

Anon

Look,

You can write something like a mail manager without any problem (If you have the skill). The approach is generally not complicated

Get MTA going
Write PHP API to that MTA

For that I suggest you use qmail (www.qmail.org) and read a few things about IMAP, SMTP... do some research.

I was thinking about cranking a project like that in C, but right now I am way too busy.

Anon

Since no one else has mentiond it, look at twig. It's a full web based email client (reading and sending) it uses imap on your server to allow your users to interact with there email. It has alot of nice features, and it's written in PHP.

http://twig.screwdriver.net/

It's also licened under the GNU Public License so you don't have to buy it.

tarius0508

There are PHP scripts that perform what you ask. And they are free. Good place to search is http://www.sourceforge.net and http://www.freshmeat.net

For the person who made meantion about "I cant believe people still pay for software", I know I was a little disheartened, but corporations arent really interested in free software, its the support they get. Even though free software you technically have a community to help you out with some software, the problem is, if the program fails usually the documentation has a disclaimer, which scares corporations away, where as if you pay for software, you get technical support, bug fixes, etc, etc(not in all cases though).

What it boils down to is, who gets the blame and how fast they can get it fixed. I tried writing php scripts for the company I used to work for, and they wouldnt allow it as it wasnt part of my job, and if I ever got let go, or quit, they would have to hire someone with the knowledge to do the fixes, updates, etc.

So if you think about it this way, for a corporation to pay 5,000 dollars for a piece of software, they get 3 yrs technical support, free updates, etc. So if something does go wrong, then the people at the company can always complain to the vendor. Where as open source, 90% of the time, you cant contact the author via phone to get the ball rolling on a fix.

Corporate Politics arent fun, believe me, its just one big blame fest if you ask me.

Anon

Ok... You bring up some good points. Software vendors (opensource) make there bread and butter off of tech support basically or having someone there to fix things. But lets take your example... A vendor pays 5000 dollars for a piece of software. Lets say you the company does offer free Tech support with is (there are still a lot of companies that wont so they have you twice). Now...Lets say you write software on this platform (For instance Windows although it could be something else). Well you might or might not pay for technical support but you WILL pay for manditory upgrades. So now you are paying for the software and are stuck in a neverending upgrade cycle. (All costing money). You also might have to keep renewing your software licence which would make the deal even more expensive. So all in all you are stuck. As for hiring people that know opensource... you are going to have to do that with commercial software as well. I dont think I am following your logic there.

Companies are afraid of open source frankly cause its free. "If its so good why would they give it away". Let me preface by saying microsoft (biggest advocate against opesource) was one of the (if not the) first companies to come up with this idea of paying for Software. (If you want proof I will give you and article on it). Before eveything was opensource (general software that is). Open-source isnt alway great at everything (DVD players for example although I have one that works), but they are great at a lot of things. Apache controls 65% of the server market and rising. Apache is opensource. PHP obviously is gaining. Linux I think is getting to be up there with Mac as far as OSes. Besides all this... I couldnt even write this to you had the TCP/IP protocols not been devoloped (free) as opensource. Because we are getting off topic, I will end here. But there is a wonderful site with more insite than I have. Try:

http://www.opensource.org

Look at the advocacies and especially:

http://www.netaction.org/articles/freesoft.html

Sorry this is kinda long. I had to write a paper discussing Comercial vs Opensource on time, so I love to talk about it. 🙂

tarius0508

You missed what I'm saying.

Most software companies will not charge for upgrades if you buy their software, although some will do that for a limited time.

Companies are affraid of the no-support aspect of open source, which you cant really blame them, if lets say you bought a video game, you have trouble playing it, you call up the company they have people who are hired for just technical support, which if they find out its not the computer then its the software and they submit it as a bug report.

Where as open source, you have to email, or post on a forum and someone may reply(although 90% of the time they do reply.)

Microsoft wasnt the first company to charge for software, originally with Bell Labs when they released Unix to universities, universities had to pay for the copy. It hasnt been a new concept since computers were made, its just taken many shapes and forms. From people being paid to write the software to specs for the company, to writing the software and selling it to multiple companies as-is.

The point is there is the support issues that companies need, like a security blanket, to use software, some dont care if its free or not, but most need to know if something goes wrong, they can blame it on the low end guy, and get it fixed 🙂

Anon

Matthew, I agree with your take on how Corporations look at opensource. But I'd just like to point out one little flaw in your last remarks.

"Where as open source, you have to email, or post on a forum and someone may reply(although 90% of the time they do reply.) "

While this is the way to get in touch with the author of the code, since it's opensource you can go in and fix it yourself. I know most corporations (not in IT) don't have programmers on staff, and that will slow the adoption of opensource software in those areas, but in companies with programmers this is a great boon. Since you can have someone in house look at the problem and get it fixed. If you got a bug submitted to a paid company many times you wouldn't get a fix until the next software release. I know I've been there. The people working at both companies have other jobs to be doing and rushing a bug fix to 1 client isn't important to the Software creator, and taking a programmer off of whatever they are doing to fix a bug in some tool is wasteful. There is no winning in the current business structures.

What is needed is the appropriation of funds into the IT Infrastructure of a company to hire a programmer who's job is to fix any opensource code that has problems with it. This cost should be aligned with the server and desktop maintence departments. Traditionally IT and programmers have been in different departments, causing annimosity between the two. Programmers will tweak there systems to work best for themselves, but if something goes wrong they will need IT's help to figure it out sometimes, causeing IT headaches that they have to support mutiple installs. And then IT will try to force a single install base (my current company won't allow a user with an apple airport card to access the wireless network because they standardized on Cisco). So if companies would start including a budget for an opensource programmer or 2 to work with IT they could have the best of both worlds. Free opensource software, and fast bug fixes without removing a programmer from needed projects. Maybe we need to start proposing this to our companies?

Anon

Its a little more then having the people in the company who could do the work. One time when my company was looking for helpdesk software, the problem with that is the commerical software was like 800+ dollars, for a decent program and addon packages, and there are a bunch of freeware ones that were better, included source code too. My boss didnt want to do it because if I were to do the modifications, that would take away from my job functions that I was hired for, and if I'm paying more attention to programming rather then doing helpdesk(thats about the extent of our IT department), then they'd have to hire more people so in a way, they have a point, and also depends on the company as well.