Supporting dovecot

  • Apologies if this is the wrong forum in which to post this. It seemed like the “least bad” place to try.

    I’m building a community site for my high school class to help support our 50th reunion plans. I want to be able to give the site administrators and moderators email addresses in the site domain which they can use to communicate with users.

    My server (debian 11) runs an email server based on postfix and dovecot (using IMAP). It’s easy enough to add virtual users to dovecot…but to do that I have to store a bcrypt-based hash of the user’s password. That’s simple to do at the command line using doveadm. However, I don’t want to give everyone command line access to my server (and most of them wouldn’t know how to get around in that kind of environment anyway).

    I could have users send me the password they want to use so I could run it through doveadm, but that’s not terribly secure.

    So how is this kind of scenario (i.e., letting authenticated WP site users manage, and maybe even create, virtual postfix/dovecot emails) typically handled? Is it something that’s usually handled by a specialized control panel outside of the WordPress framework?

    One somewhat kludgy workaround I thought of was to find either a plugin or an online service which let people generate the hash that doveadm does at the command line. The hash could then be mailed to me so I could include it in the virtual user file without having to know what the underlying password is.

    Again, apologies if this off-topic. I’ve never run into this need before, and I find it fascinating. After all, creating email accounts for users is something every control panel I’ve ever seen lets at least a site administrator do without resorting to the command line.

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  • Your request has nothing to do with WordPress. You are looking for a way to manage your server via a browser. WordPress as a CMS is not intended for this purpose.

    Of course, your wish could be implemented as an individual WordPress plugin. A developer can certainly do that for you. You can find someone like that here: https://jobs.wordpress.net

    There are many different tools for managing servers that you could install on your server. Here are some names: cpanel, plesk, ispconfig. Each of them can support what you are looking for. However, it is often difficult to install them afterwards, you would have to set up the server again.

    Thread Starter MarkOlbert

    (@markolbert)

    Gee, I guess the approach I came up with — which does intimately involve WordPress — must be in violation of international law or something :).

    Thanx for the suggestions. But may I suggest leading with what can easily be taken as a slap in the face is not really the best way to encourage dialog and/or involvement with a community-oriented and based ecosystem like WordPress?

    Have a nice day.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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