username@domain emails for all profiles on the social network site?

[johnsmith153]

Not sure where to start, and it may not be entirely PHP.

 

I am helping a friend with a small social network (5,000 users). They want to add a feature where each user gets given their own email account in the format username@domain.com with domain.com being the domain of the social network.

 

Is this too much? I've never thought of anything like this before.

 

How would we create the email accounts? Can PHP do it? Would it be an API through the web host / email space provider?

[trq]

This completely depends on how your email is setup.

 

Given a dedicated server or vps your can setup virtual email accounts (these are email accounts that do not require a login on the actual machine) and most smtp servers can read user information from a database. So, once this is setup it is as simple as adding new entries to this database.

 

Having said that however, unless you know a fair bit about Linux server administration (and obviously you don't given your asking this question), I would not advise going down this path.

 

I use Google Apps for all my email these days and they do provide this sort of functionality through there API's, there are probably many other email providers that do the same.