[pmwiki-users] FAST Data possibilities

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 01:44:43PM -0400, The Editor wrote:
> My question is--
> 
> 1)  how robust is PHP for doing something like mailing out emails to a
> list of 100 or 200 emails?  Or more?
> 2)  Will it bog down the system or anything for other users while that
> script is processing (or can others still do their work
> simultaneously)?
> 
> I guess I'm basically wondering if this is a realistic possibility, or
> if it's unrealistic.  The coding part appears to me fairly simple..

In dealing with mailing list types of things -- the sending of
the actual email messages themselves is fairly straightforward.
It's handling everything else -- especially bounce replies
and "I'm out of the office" messages -- that makes for a challenge.

> And one other general question that follows along would be, is there
> any way to have PmWiki periodically retrieve emails and process them?
> What would that involve?  

In general, it's probably easier to use a script such as procmail
to process incoming messages as they arrive than it is to try to 
get PmWiki/PHP to periodically retrieve them (and all of the
authentication/protocol issues that entails).

Pm