Integrated POP3 mail checker

[ShujiYomo]

I think it would be cool if someone wrote a POP3 mail mod that would integrate into the PM system ... basically, the user puts in all of their POP3 mail info, and are given a certain amount of space to store their mail ... sort of what Yahoo does when it checks your POP3 mail ... gives your users a reason to come back, if they can use you as a webmail service ...

You are not PROVIDING free mail accounts ... they must already have one ... it just gives them a way to check it.

[keysers0ze]

Hey... I really like that idea!
And I for one (or rather two) would DEFINATELY find it VERY useful...

[sylvester]

Damn, that's a really nice idea

[ShujiYomo]

Why thank you, I thought it was rather good. Now ... can someone code it? I think YaBB SE would be the first!

[David]

I would much rather see an IMAP checker then a POP3 one.

[ShujiYomo]

why not have one that does both? Most ISPs only give access to POP3 ... that means that the majority of users have POP3 email accounts, and not IMAP ...

I'm looking right now for a POP3 mail checker that could be modified to integrate with YaBB SE ... maybe that will help someone that wants to code this ... If I was a coder, I'd be all over it.

[David]

The reason I dislike POP3 is normally it downloads messages from the server.  As a board admin I would not want that because of diskspace and security risks(viruses).  So you need to make it so it would not download messages, which is why IMAP is nice.

[ShujiYomo]

Well ... you could set it to do that ... but I understand where that comes from; I hadn't thought about that part.

As for the space issue, this is one of those mods that you wouldn't install UNLESS you had the space for it (and then you limit each user to, I'd say, about 2MB of storage). Your IMAP point is a good one, but wouldn't that leave the POP3-only users out in the cold?

[David]

I guess you would have to decide how big of a mod you want to write.  Ideally it woud support both POP3 and IMAP all configurable from the admin center.  The problem with doing that is it would be a very large task.  The next step down would be writing only a POP3 one, or only an IMAP one.  IMAP would be easier but as you stated it wouldn't work for everyone.

[ShujiYomo]

That's why I had the idea to look for a "ready" version of a similar application ... all it would take at that point is someone adding the admin functions into the admin center, and restricting access to the mail checker to logged in members.

Also, all of the options would not be on the administrative side ... the user would have to be able to put in their own mail server information (incoming server, outgoing server*, email address, username/password, etc) because each user may be checking mail from a different domain.

*only if the admin chose to allow them to send AND recieve mail from the board ... I'm not sure I'd want my server IP sending out spam ... and since I OWN my server ... that would be especially bad for the people that have sites hosted by my company. Well, okay, it would be especially bad for me, because then they would yell at me, yadda, yadda.

[ShujiYomo]

No one wants to give this a go?

[nferreri]

making a mail program is a rather lengthy process... i knwo the pop part wouldn't be really hard cuz yer just pulling messages from the server and storing them in the database as PM's.

imap is a different story though... you get into mess with folders and having them updated and such... big pain in the butt.. i was gonna write my own mail program but decided i would be better off finding one that's already done.. if you're interested in something like this squirrel mail is a wonderful program and very easy to setup.

[ShujiYomo]

The problem with squirrel mail is that it doesn't have the ability for the USER to specify the mail server ... that's the whole point, for your forum members to be able to check any pop mail account from your board.

[Iridium]

I'm not sure if anyone's yet realised this, but, although IMAP is much nicer than POP3, if you wanted to make this mod, and not suffer from the messages taking up valuable server space, why not just set it so that the messages remain on the server? That way it could be a mail-viewer, rather than a full-blown mail-client.

Edit: And considering that in PHP, the imap_ functions also work for POP3 (and NNTP) it shouldn't be too difficult to make it so that it works for both IMAP and POP3, and even make a news reader if you wanted.

Which suddenly gives me an idea - why doesn't someone make a program (not a script, but a standalone executable) which makes it possible to browse a YaBB SE forum like a newsgroup - ie. it'd be a NNTP server that uses the YaBB SE MySQL database? (using a client like Outlook Express). I'm not too sure how or even if this would work, but it was just an idea that sprang to mind, and would enable people to browse a YaBB forum at the same time that they check their e-mail, or look at their calendar.

[kiboost]

Hey what about this ? I'm just searching a mod/program/way to read/write a yabbse board into a news reader as outlook. Is there any chance to get this someday ?

Thanks

Kib