Topic awaiting preservation: very simple question seeks webwise smart-dude for loving relationship

what do I need to look at in order to create an email forwarding program/script on my server?

I would like to be able to send and email to one address (something on my server) and then it to send that email without benefit of forward prefixes to a list of email addresses stored some how on the server.

Why do this rather then send an email with multiple recipients? because most spam software deletes email that has too many recipients.

Why do I want this? because it would be useful when contacting all the artists who are featured on my site.

Do I want you guys to script it for me? Nope, just tell me what I should search for (this must have a proper name).

I reckon I have all that is required. I don't have access to an smtp server, but I do have the sendmail thing which my host assures me will send out email for me if the email is fully formatted.

visit my CryoKinesis Online Gallery

You should be able to accomplish what you want with procmail
http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/procmail/qs/

It takes a bit of configuration, and you might need to do your forwarding script in PERL depending on what is installed on the mail server but this can do what you want.

-Butcher-

For a more full-featured solution, try a full-scale mailing list such as Mailman. I recently went through a good deal of effort to get such a list set up myself, so I'd be glad to share my discoveries if you go that route and encounter trouble.

Wow this is getting a bit heavy for me, I have around three uses for a mail sending function on my site but it seems that to get the most useful code I would need to script it myself, maybe I'll work on that as my first php project.

If you are interested in what my 3 uses are they're as follows:

1. an online form with multiple image attachment capabilities that creates a mime formatted email and mails it to a specific email account.

2. a webmail system for accessing, storing and sending mail through a browser. This would need to connect to my pop3 accounts.

3. the aforementioned email to server to subscriber list script, I don't run a mailing list, I merely have to update the artists featured on my site from time to time. The mailman program seems a little complex for me, although unless my knowledge gets much better I'm gonna run into large security holes in any webmail based system, and this would not be good. - does anyone know of any good books on php, security, email etc.?

Well, I hate to say it, but if you want the functions you just described, with an absolute minimum of fuss and muss, just sign up for a web-based email system such as Microsoft's Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. They'll all allow you to send email via the web, attach images to it, and send email to everyone on a decent-sized recipient list. I know Hotmail lets you check your POP3 accounts through the Hotmail interface -- I wouldn't be surprised if Yahoo Mail did the same thing.

(Obviously writing your own would get you some "geek cred," but if you don't need that, there's no reason to beat yourself up writing your own program.)

[This message has been edited by Perfect Thunder (edited 05-26-2003).]

hotmail has the 2mb box limit (1mb max email size), not good for multiple files of 10mb. Why do I have such large emails? because people send me whole assortments of images and video projects. I guess I'll just read up on whatever I can find.

Thanks

If you've got access to set things up on your own server, there are definitely plenty of web-based email programs out there that you can install. Perhaps one of those would be up your alley? I don't know any of 'em offhand, and you can Google just as well as I can, of course.

If you have ASP, set for javascript, this code is pretty straightforward, using CDONTS.

objCDO= new ActiveXObject("CDONTS.NewMail");
objCDO.From="User Name <"+Request.Form("email")+">";
objCDO.To=Request.Form("contact");
objCDO.Subject="Orders/recieps";
objCDO.Body=unescape(Request.Form("page"));

objCDO.BodyFormat=0;
objCDO.MailFormat=0;

objCDO.Cc="";
objCDO.Bcc="";

objCDO.Send();

objCDO=0;

It's almost identical in VBscript, only you dont use activeX..
You can put something like this in a loop, maybe collecting the messages and the adresses from a SQL database..


(^-^)b