This technique assumes you are running Apache Web Server and have access to edit the Apache configuration files; this technique can be used with .htaccess files but it’s not as secure. It’s generally geared towards users who don’t like having important passwords or information in PHP files owned by Apache’s user (www-data, nobody, etc). This is especially more risky if you don’t limit where users can open files or run suPHP or similar

This technique works by including a root owned file into the public run-time environment variables of apache. using Apache directives you can control which site or even page has access to these variables.

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I use Google Apps Standard Edition on every domain I own. Google Apps Standard Edition is free and will allow your own domain to have a Gmail SMTP, giving you and your users an email interface similar to GMail.

The benefit you get with Google app’s mail is you don’t have to go through the complicated mess of setting up mail servers, users, passwords, web interfaces, all that. You simply tell Google to do all of it for you. Best of all, you get all of Gmail’s features for your own domain. Almost no free or perhaps even paid for mail server can offer that kind of functionality. I normally just forward that domain’s email to my personal Gmail. That I make a filter to mark that domain’s emails with a special tag so I can sort through it. I also setup my personal Gmail to use the domain to send mail from.

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