receiving and validating incoming mail with php

[dhosthee]

We are developing a email web site.but we are facing problem in receiving and validating the mail.i have the following doubts.can you please help me in clarifying these??? one more important thing is we are not using squrrelmail, qmail etc.

how do we receive emails for users in email web site?
do we save all the received emails in admin's mail box or in database as per the username (my idea on email web site is,all the incoming mail are stored in admin's mail box and after the email mail is stored in database,and then the mail deleted in admin's mail box.Is it correct.if not how to store the emails in database directly in web site)
what is the technique behind the receiving mail???i think there are various techniques like email piping etc.
is there any special process of creating users for email web site,i mean do we need to create mailbox(i think mail account) for each user at the time of registration.if we need to create mail box for user,can we create it with imap_createmailbox() function.
are the users gmail,yahoomail etc are accessig database or their mail accounts at the time their login??
can we do all these things with imap functions in php??

[dhosthee]

friends,

we are developing a email web site.but we are facing problem in receiving and validating the mail.i have the following doubts.can you please help me in clarifying these???
one more important thing is we are not using squrrelmail,qmail etc.

(1) how do we receive emails for users in email web site?

(2) do we save all the received emails in admin's mail box or in database as per the username
(my idea on email web site is,all the incoming mail are stored in admin's mail box and after the email mail is stored in database,and then the mail deleted in admin's mail box.Is it correct.if not how to store the emails in database directly in web site)

(3) what is the technique behind the receiving mail???i think there are various techniques like email piping etc.

(4) is there any special process of creating users for email web site,i mean do we need to create mailbox(i think mail account) for each user at the time of registration.if we need to create mail box for user,can we create it with imap_createmailbox() function.

(5) are the users gmail,yahoomail etc are accessig database or their mail accounts at the time their login??

(6) can we do all these things with imap functions in php??

please help me....

[chrishea]

It sounds as if you are trying to create an email service like GMail or Yahoo Mail as opposed to an email client. If that is the case, I think that you are into something pretty complex if you try to build it yourself. There are many mail server systems available. The easiest course of action would be to install one of them and use that. If you really want to build something yourself, you can still download one or two of the open source mail servers to get an idea of the size and the complexity of the work involved. That might change your mind. You can find a comparison of mail servers (with links) here.