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Final Year College Email/Search Project

  • 14-09-2005 12:31AM
    #1
    JumpinJackFlash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭


    Hi Lads,

    I need to come up with an idea for my final year project by next Monday. The project group will consist of 3 members and the requirements are that we must attempt something that we are not too familiar with.

    I'm considering setting up a personal apache server (php and mysql installed on a Linux OS of course!) which will host a search engine website and also an email service. Basically it will be a project version of yahoo.com. But without all the news, just the email service and search facility.

    Like I said at the beginning of the post we need to do the project on something that none of us are overlay familiar with, we all come from design backgrounds btw, so I’m interested in finding out what exactly will be needed on the server to get it handling SMTP requests and mime etc etc....

    We are all relevantly techie, and understand that some people may feel we could be getting over our heads with the project but that’s part in parcel of this project....that we externally learn a new system and new technologies and document it and all that (I’m sure ye all remember the horror of having to write documentation when all you want to do is finish the project :rolleyes: )...any advise/recommendations/guides/websites would be massively appreciated, i'd like to hear from people who have maybe attempted something similar or who know whats best for this kind of setup.

    Jack


Comments

  • #2
    Illkillya
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,372 ✭✭✭Illkillya


    Hello,

    I'm sorry if this is not the kind of post that you are looking for... but if you are doing a fairly technical course like computer science... isn't this project a little bit too easy? Like, you can set up a linux web server with php and mysql which hosts email, in a morning - and thats even without knowing much about linux. Most linux distros come with apache, mysql, php, etc. as an option of part of the install, and for a basic setup theres very little configuration required.

    Then for the search engine software, theres so much open source stuff out there its really hard to go wrong with it. I'm starting 4th year comp science myself, so I'm probably in the same boat as yourself... although I don't know when I have to pick my project by (in fact I don't even know when the term starts) but I will probably be posting something similar here in a few weeks :)


  • #3
    krinDar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 95 ✭✭krinDar


    JumpinJackFlash wrote:
    so I’m interested in finding out what exactly will be needed on the server to get it handling SMTP requests and mime etc etc....

    Well. You need a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) such as sendmail, postfix, qmail or exim. I think that postfix or exim should be the most suitable and either of those are probably in whatever flavour you choose.

    You probably would not have to worry about MIME from the MTA side of things, but your client will have to support it.


  • #4
    JumpinJackFlash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭JumpinJackFlash


    Illkillya wrote:
    Hello,

    I'm sorry if this is not the kind of post that you are looking for... but if you are doing a fairly technical course like computer science... isn't this project a little bit too easy?

    Hi Illkillya, I'm after transferring into from a multimedia course into IT. All of my previous subjects where audio & design based and the current subjects been tought in IT consist of Network, Security, EBusiness & Databases. I've only been back since this Monday so the requirements of the progect are fairly vague at the moment. I would imagine that learning to setup and administrate your own server, email facility with sql/php powered search engine would be fine. Although i'll find out what the students did last year to determine the proper benchmark.


  • #5
    JumpinJackFlash
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭JumpinJackFlash


    krinDar wrote:
    Well. You need a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) such as sendmail, postfix, qmail or exim. I think that postfix or exim should be the most suitable and either of those are probably in whatever flavour you choose.

    You probably would not have to worry about MIME from the MTA side of things, but your client will have to support it.

    cool, nice one krinDar, thanks for the info.

    What about security for the server? A friend who uses linux quite a bit recommended i look into www.smoothwall.org . Its a firewall that acts like A NAT within a LAN on a dedicated PC, he says that once you have something similiar to smoothwall enabled your setup would be air tight! The security side of things will be highly important for the project.


  • #6
    Red Alert
    Hosted Moderators Posts: 7,486 ✭✭✭Red Alert


    Doing a membership system with LDAP would be a jewel in the crown as you'd have full integration with Postfix and also you could offer a 'premium' version where other member e-mails can be searched from a 'thick' client like Outlook or Thunderbird.


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