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Asked: 2026-05-31T12:11:52+00:00

i want bulid faster webmail i’ve built small webmail script based on ( php

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i want bulid faster webmail

i’ve built small webmail script based on ( php imap functions ( imap port connection ) )

but it take a long time to connect and get the mail ..

So, i decided to read the mail manually without connect ( by my own functions ) ..

i’ve built my own functions, that go to the ( user mails ) path, and then i use ( scandir function )

to get all mails in the folder, and then read/get them manually!

i’ll show you an example code 

<?
$current_folder = 'new';
$virtual_user = 'someone';
$path_to_mails = '/home/user/mail/' . $virtual_user . '/' . $current_folder;
$all_emails = scandir( $path_to_mails );
foreach ( $all_emails as $mail_file ) {
              $file = file_get_contents ( $mail_file ) ;
              //Now i've the mail file .. 
              //i'll explode it and extract the important information from it
}
?>

Now i got emails without connect to any port

i think it faster than the ( php imap functions ) …

but it also take a long time to get and read the file!!

why gmail and yahoo is soooooooooooooooooooo faster??? may be they using database to store their webmail files?

NOW MY QUESTIONS IS

1 – is my own functions really faster than the php imap functions theoretically? ( may be i am wrong )

2 – ( Gmail , Yahoo , Hotmail ) where they storing their mail files? database or hard disk? they are so faster and
in the same time they allow you to connect to their server via imap and get your mails via php, that mean they using hard disk to store email files!!
or may be they use database and they customized their webmail softwares

3 – is there any way to customize the postfix, store the mails to database instant of the hard disk??
4 – tell me the best idea to build a faster and strong webmail system

PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE ANY OF THIS QUESTIONS

i am working on this project 3 months ago.. i’ve tired!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    1 – Yes.

    2 – Depends on the provider. I assume Yahoo and Hotmail might be using actual IMAP servers but I don’t think they disclose their infrastructure.

    3 – This does not relate to postfix. Postfix is just the MTA after all. It doesn’t store the mails it just transfers them. So you can of course code your own database driven service. Daunting task 😉

    4 – Build on existing tools. The easiest choice is to build on top of the Horde Webmail

    Webmail is a daunting task. The small snippet of PHP code you showed is really light years away from reality if you consider the complexity of modern webmailers. If you really want something working you need to start with existing building blocks. Horde is the best option there because it is a development framework, provides efficient IMAP caching capabilities, a decent AJAX backend and so on. Nevertheless: Your own webmail service will remain a daunting task nevertheless.

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