Pre-Release: Hastymail for DA

I've packaged the excellent webmail package Hastymail into a DA plugin for your enjoyment...

Screenshots

Hastymail Plugin

This plugin will make some very minor modifications to the default DA skins (which will be undone if you uninstall it) to add a link to the email sections.

The plugin distribution requires that you manually modify your httpd.conf file to include a file for security purposes. This is explained during the install.

Tested on RH3.4, Centos 3.4 and DA 1.24.2. Hastymail does not require imap support in PHP. It works fine with open_basedir, haven't tested safe mode of any kind. It should be fully compatible with Squirrelmail.

Please let me know if you have any problems.

BTW, the plugin assumes that your apache docroot is /var/www/html... if you've changed that, you should modify the plugin scripts or add a symlink to your current docroot.

ballyn said:

This plugin will make some very minor modifications to the default DA skins (which will be undone if you uninstall it) to add a link to the email sections.

Click to expand...

To me this is the most troublesome part of the plugin.

There are arguably three ways to handle changes to DA skins...

1) Allow everything to be done by the plugin system

2) Make your own changes to all the skins on the server.

3) Copy all the skins on the server to the custom directory, and make the changes there.

I'm of the opinion that of these the only safe way to go would be to use the plugin system.

Why, because if you make your changes to the current skins on the server any update from DA has the possibility of overwriting them, and if you make your changes to skins in the custom directory, then any update from DA has the possibility of outdating them.

Which method have you chosen? And why?

Thanks.

Jeff

Jeff: Great question... This is exactly why I started this thread.

I chose to replace the actual affected skin files in the skins directory for the default skins. Yes, the files will get overwritten during an upgrade, but reinstalling the plugin will fix this.

I personally don't want to use hooks because this is a webmail package and should be grouped with the other webmail links, but that's definitely an option.

Ideally, I'd like a "custom" option for skins that is similar to the custom scripts functionality, or even the option to specify which page or page section the hook will be displayed on (instead of the main page/bottom section).

One of the reasons this is "prerelease" is to get feedback on issues like this... I'm open to alternatives or different versions of the plugin. I probably won't implement some kind of configuration option because of the security issues involved.

DA really needs to allow developers to put hooks wherever they want. It is a bit too much to assume every plugin should go on the bootom of the skin.

Having a webmail link in different locations is not user friendly.

I agree rldev. A first step could be to make nothing completely hard coded. That way other links could be removed and edited, as well as allowing the grouping of this plugin to show up with the other webmail links.

Thanks for the plugin.

I'm having an issue, maybe you can assist.

Hastymail is appending the entire domain name when constructing a from address (ex: user@www.domain.com)

This behavior can be overridden when the append_name and virtual_list options are configured appropriately in hastymail.conf.
Unfortunately, when I set the append_name option to virtual_host, it prevents logins altogether.

Any idea why that's happening?

The append_name option alters the logins... so if you set that to virtual_host, and the user goes to www.mydomain.com/hastymail, they can login as "joebob" and hastymail will convert the login information to "[email protected]". For DA this doesn't work since we have both "real" accounts (without a domain name) and "virtual" accounts (pop accounts with the domain name) and the real accounts will always have the domain name appended (which we don't want).

For the from address, I believe you just need to login to hastymail, go to "Options" and set the Address in the profile. The "domain" setting in hastymail.conf can be used to set the domain initially. The append_name setting needs to be blank if you set a default domain.

Not working for me

"There is a problem with your login
Please login again"