I'm considering having something like Yahoo... where you can sign up for a free e'mail account. Does anyone know of a software that does that, or is that always some sort of 'custom' thing?

you trying to horde tons of account?

Yeah... I wanna start a couple thousand different accounts, then brag about it to my geek friends. hahahah

No no no... There's a reason to my madness, but I need to know how to do it, or what to install, etc.

Any idea's?

Hmm...  Depends what you are talking about...

I think I've seen software that allows a similar thing.  If you have a decent webhosting service, you can have a private setup, so that only you can create accounts.

Personally, I use Dreamhost webhosting services, and one of the options they have is to get you setup with Google Apps (for free), which means that you leverage Gmail, yet have a @yourdomain.com email address.  Pretty cool.  You can also setup your catch-all account in there too.

One last option, if all these accounts are for you, setup a catchall email address, which is the only one you'd check for mail in.  Then you write a PHP script, that allows you to say you sent this email from [anythinghere]@yourdomain.com, so that even though that account doesn't exist, you still receive the email anyway.

If you really wanted, I know how to do the last option.

Hope that helped, if not, elaborate a bit more.  E.g. is it for your users, a few mates or just you, stuff like that which could help us make a helpful decision.

Nic hinted to a solution in his reply - "horde" - http://www.horde.org/imp/

If you want to re-invent the wheel then try "Northie's 10 point web based email system":

1 - set up a catch all email address for the domain
2 - set up a mysql database with a table of users/passwords and a table for the messages
3 - find a php script that reads from an email inbox (word press has one)
4 - set up a cron job for the script in step 3 to read from the inbox from step1
5 - parse the message and update the database accordingly
6 - use php's mail() function to send email
7 - build the pages that show the emails.
8 - learn about how to handle attached files
9 - add some fluff
10 - market it

To elaborate, it's for other people. Really... nothing up my sleeve here.

I'd like the average user to be able to have a free e'mail account, through a signup screen. The access would be to anyone and everyone.

Knowing that, it looks like I'd have to do everything that Northie described, of which, I know nothing about.

I guess one of these days I'll have to sit down and actually learn how to do all that MySQL and PHP stuff.

I can ask my host if they have anything, but I doubt it. There's lots of stuff in the back-end, but nothing remotely close to that.

Be sure to check the reviews first, but:
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_S … Utilities/

You'll find something there that suits you (I hope), and possibly even for free!

Great site that one, plenty of things to be found.

Because of Captcha code now this becoming diffiuclt to get automatic email maker. But how ever there one is called Rediffmail.com (having PR 8). Check at there. may be you will find your luck at there.

qwest, I think you have the wrong idea.  He wants to PROVIDE email addresses, not get one himself.

MrStitch wrote:

I'd like the average user to be able to have a free e'mail account, through a signup screen. The access would be to anyone and everyone.

Knowing that, it looks like I'd have to do everything that Northie described, of which, I know nothing about.

Just get this:

Northie wrote:

Nic hinted to a solution in his reply - "horde" - http://www.horde.org/imp/

Ok, I was talking to my host trying to figure out exactly what they have, how it's installed, and what I can do with it.

Unfortunately, they don't have anything like this and they can't point me in the right direction. Also, I already use Horde through my webhost, but it's actually installed elsewhere, so I can't modify it.

I checked out that Horde page, but it looks like it's just the client, and a fella would still need all the scripting work done like Northie explained. Doesn't sound like a whole lot... but I don't know any php.

But that's ok, I don't absolutely need it right now, and when business starts picking up, I can worry about paying someone else to do it.

Besides, the user interface would need a custom look too, just to fit the theme that I'm going for. Hordes interface imo is a train wreck.