Free email

[wantadsinc]

I'm going to have a project of having a web site which offers free email accounts where people can sign up for free email service like yahoo and hotmail. Will Plesk control panel be able to wok with this. People won't be able to use plesk but will the admin be able to login to the control panel and see all the addresses? With or with out the control panel will this service of signing up for free email accounts work?

 

[tmonsen]

To answer your poll question, this is certainly something that would be feasible on a plesk system. You would just need to create a form that would allow the creation of email users (probably in conjunction with one of the script's that plesk has already created).

However, you really need to think through what it is that you are doing. Just a couple of the many potential problems you will face.... Free services such as Hotmail and Yahoo have hundreds (if not thousands) of machines to host their mail service. They have to be constantly vigual of spammers trying to abuse the system, not to mention the problems of dealing with incoming spam.

If you decide to go for it, good luck, and let us know the address. I was thinking about finding a new address to use for filling out online forms anyway .

 

[ShadowMan@]

Originally posted by wantadsinc
I'm going to have a project of having a web site which offers free email accounts where people can sign up for free email service like yahoo and hotmail. Will Plesk control panel be able to wok with this. People won't be able to use plesk but will the admin be able to login to the control panel and see all the addresses? With or with out the control panel will this service of signing up for free email accounts work?

Assuming all the email accounts are created under a single domain, then you could login even as the domain admin and see all the mail accounts. The Plesk admin, of course, can always see all the Clients, Domains, Mail users, etc.

The control panel itself has no provision built in for doing auto-signups, as TMonsen posted, you would have to write a front end form/script to handle that. You would make use of the Plesk command line utilities:

Managing Mail Users/System:
http://download1.swsoft.com/Plesk/Plesk7.5/Doc/plesk-7.5r-sdk-html/docs/cu/unix/ch14.html

He is also correct that unless you have adequate hardware to handle it, as well as preparing for the onslaught of spammers and other abusive vermin, you will need a great deal of 'luck'.

Before you do anything, think 'server hardening' all the way from the OS kernel and up.

Regardless, let us know if you get it off the ground and keep us updated as to any issues which WILL arise (not maybe). I don't like being negative towards any business venture, but starting your own 'yahoo' like service is not to be taken on lightly and without major resources...