Email Processing

[grvs]

I'm about to move a website to HelioHost and need some information on email processing. I've only worked with the rudimentary processing via HTML so far.

 

I'm working on a club website and want to be able to have members email each other. An HTML mockup of the page is attached. In this mockup:

- Sif is logged in

- checking various boxes will send emails to the selected members

- the email should come from Sif's personal email (stored in the DB)

- email needs to go to all checked members emails

 

How do I process this behind the scenes in PHP? What do I need to set up for the site to connect to the email servers? What else do I need to know?

 

If someone could point me to documentation or a step-by-step list I'd be grateful...

 

Thanks

Walt

emailPage.htm

[Ryan Zimmerman]

Welcome to HelioHost!

 

The best documentation for php is www.php.net IMO.

Here is the chapter on the mail() function: http://php.net/manual/en/book.mail.php

Keep in mind as you read the documentation, Johnny is using PHP v. 5.4.41 and Stevie is at v. 5.3.8 ; so the manual may list some things that do not apply to your HelioHost Server.

 

How are you planning to implement the login functionality?

[wolstech]

Just to add to that, we limit total emails you can send to 50/day, so take that into consideration when developing your software. Also, be sure that your users have agreed to receive/are expecting these emails and that they won't flag it as spam. If we get a report, your account will get suspended.

[grvs]

Thank you for that link. I'll be perusing it shortly.

 

So the limitations imposed by HelioHost will limit our 25 member club from adequate communications it seems. Can anything be done about that?

[wolstech]

You're trying to create a mail list essentially. There's services dedicated to doing this sort of thing, and none of them are free. Finding a service that will let scripts send the email the way you want will be difficult if not impossible to get for free due to their being prone to abuse.

 

The 50/day we have is for that reason: to prevent spam/abuse. Most free hosts offer 1 email / hour, or no email at all. There's a few with no restrictions (I've used one) but they're blocked by just about every spam blacklist out there (which means nobody accepts the mail sent from them).

[grvs]

As for login, if user & password match, set $_SESSION['user'] to username

 

The PHP manual doesn't really say much of anything. There is nothing noted about versions of PHP at all.

 

Hang on, my understanding may be messing me up.

 

On the 50 a day limit, do you mean

1) 50 separate and distinct uses of the MAIL function

2) one single email to 50 addresses is a limit?

 

Also I am not able to connect via FTP. Isn't my address grvs.heliohost.org?

[wolstech]

50 emails, regardless of how and to whom they're sent. It can be 1 email sent to 50 people, 50 emails each sent to 1 person, or anything in between (2 emails each sent to 25 people, etc.) Mail sent via the webmail counts, along with mail() function use, and any other methods that send an email.

 

Don't try to write your own login system. They're not easy to make, and minor mistakes can make them insecure. There's tons of free ones out there. Use one of those.

 

Your FTP configuration should be grvs.heliohost.org, and the username and password are the same as cPanel. Depending on your client, it may ask for encryption settings as well: specify either Explicit FTP over TLS, or plain FTP (unsecured). Implicit FTP over TLS is not supported, nor is SFTP.