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Chapter 11: E-Mail and News

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Chapter 11: E-Mail and News

Overview

E-mail has become part of our lives, but have you ever wondered how e-mail gets from your PC to somebody halfway around the globe? Your e-mail client program asks you to specify either a POP or an IMAP server as well as an SMTP server. What are they? How do they work in tandem to deliver, hold, and let you read your e-mail messages? You may think the Internet e-mail system is complex for you to fathom, but, as it turns out, it is an incredibly simple system at its core. The good news is, with PHP, creating applications that can send or receive e-mail messages and news is surprisingly easy.

Did we say news? Yes, but it's a different kind of news: Usenet. Usenet is one of the oldest Internet features for mass distribution of information and it provides forums where people get together and discuss their common interests. Usenet consists of tens of thousands of Internet discussion groups, called newsgroups, organized by topic. Even PHP has its own set of newsgroups where PHP developers, newbies, and pros alike, share their knowledge and get the latest news in the PHP community. Working with Usenet news in PHP is no more difficult than working with e-mail. Even a news article bears a striking resemblance to an e-mail message.

Over the next two chapters, we'll take an in-depth look at e-mail and news, and how you can incorporate related features into your PHP applications.

We begin by walking you through the basics of the e-mail system in this chapter. Let's get a sneak preview:

We'll wrap up this chapter by creating an application with which you can send e-mail or post news articles. The classes we'll be creating in this chapter lay a foundation for a web-based e-mail system presented in the next chapter.


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