Building a forum/mailing list.

[yungbloodreborn]

Hi,

  I'm working on building a forum/mailing list. I have the basic forum functionality working just fine. There are 3 issues that I'm trying to figure out how to get this working the way I want. I'm not using off the shelf forum packages, because I don't want the forum feel like it is separate from the rest of the site. I'm not looking for people to do the coding for me, I'm just looking for concepts and maybe some code clips for specific functions. Here's the questions I have:

 

1) What's the easiest way to add threads?

  Right now, I have a web form that lets users enter a subject & message, and it saves what they typed into a database. It assigns the msg a msgid. It saves their username & timestamp. Very basic, but it is functional. I would like easy replies, and be able have threads (like the "topics" here).

 

2) How do I send mail out through a smtp mail server that requires auth?

  I know about the mail() function, but that sends out direct from this box. I would like it to go through my mail server's box, so that when it get's to people, it's valid according to spf. (I don't want it rejected be certain mail providers).

 

3) How do I pull mail from an imap server?

  I would like to have a php script run from crontab to pull email from an imap server, and parse it. Any easy samples that people can think of?

-Kevin

[awpti]

1.)  Since it's stored in a DB, add a field for 'reply_to', make it an int and references the original message ID.

 

2.) Grab the PHPMailer class. It'll handle all of that for you. Highly respected class.

 

3.) There are no easy examples of IMAP Connectivity in PHP. Check out phpclasses.org - there are a number of generic classes.