[thelist] Webmail client

Liam Delahunty ldelahunty at britstream.com
Fri Jan 24 06:46:01 CST 2003


Christopher Joseph wrote:

<quote>
Can anyone recommend a good web based email client. I have access to PHP
or Perl (or A.N.Other CGI), Apache 1.3x and MySQL. The mail servers I
wish to connect to are POP3 boxes.

One thing to bear in mind is that (as list members know) high volumn
email accounts keep on building up and SO:

1. I would like to be able to store the massages taken from the mail
server in the web mail client.
2. Download the stored mail messages from the web mail client to my
mozilla mail at a later date.

</quote>

I'm not entirely sure what you mean in points 1 & 2.

As regards point 1, the web mail client would run on the server... so the
mail doesn't physically go anywhere. If you are concerned about volume you
could download to a local store and delete the messages from the server, but
then those messages are obviously no longer available to your webmail
client.

With 2, you can download mail that's been read on web mail to another
device. It isn't done within the webmail programme. You'd download mail in
the normal way.

If you are looking for a way to limit the amount of mail that you download
each day, you could use procmail on your server and split of messages based
on the subject/sender; I use this to filter off "thelist" messages to a
separate IMAP folder. With IMAP I only download the headers with IMAP so
getting email is quick, and then I can delete stuff I don't want to read
based on the subject without having to download the whole message content as
I believe one needs to do with POP messages.

AFAIK if it's POP, the folder information you've manipulated on the server
using your webmail application won't be used by your POP mail client. That's
another reason why I use IMAP, all my computers/webmail sync with the same
messages stored in the correct folders.

Anyway, this uses PHP4 and has had some good comments on another list (I
don't use it myself)
http://www.squirrelmail.org/
What is SquirrelMail?
SquirrelMail is a standards-based webmail package written in PHP4. It
includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all
pages render in pure HTML 4.0 (with no Javascript) for maximum compatibility
across browsers. It has very few requirements and is very easy to configure
and install. SquirrelMail has a all the functionality you would want from an
email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder
manipulation.

Also have a look at this:
http://openwebmail.org/openwebmail/


Kind regards,
Liam Delahunty
Mega Products Limited, 10-11 Moor Street, Soho, London W1D 5NF
http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/ Open Source PHP/MySQL E-commerce
http://www.liamdelahunty.com/ web/ design/ database/ programming
http://www.britstream.com/ Hosting/ Domain Names From UKP 7.50 p.a.




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