some old functions to help deal with email. One for sending and one for getting the unread message count of someones mailbox over imap

There is also a Mail Class in PHP

<?php
function send_mail($fromname, $fromaddress, $toname, $toaddress, $subject, $message)
{
	// Copyright 2005 ECRIA LLC, http://www.ECRIA.com
	// Please use or modify for any purpose but leave this notice unchanged.
	// Modified by Kieran Whitbread, original can be found on www.php.net
	$headers  = "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
	$headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
	$headers .= "X-Priority: 3\n";
	$headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: Normal\n";
	$headers .= "X-Mailer: php\n";
	$headers .= "From: \"".$fromname."\" <".$fromaddress.">\n";
   return mail('"'.$toname.'" <'.$toaddress.'>', $subject, $message, $headers);
}
function unread_emails($username, $password, $connectionUrl="{mail.varndean.ac.uk/novalidate-cert/norsh}")
/* Copyriht Kieran Whitbread 2005 */
{
	imap_timeout(1, 1);
	$mbox = imap_open($connectionUrl, $username, $password, OP_HALFOPEN);
	if ($mbox)
	{
		$count = 0; 
		$folders = imap_listmailbox($mbox, $connectionUrl, "*");
		foreach ($folders as $val)
		{
		       $status = imap_status($mbox, $val, SA_UNSEEN);
		       if ($status)
		       {
				$count = $count + $status->unseen;
			}
			else
			{
				 return imap_last_error();
			}
		}
		imap_close($mbox);
		return $count;
	}
	else
	{
		return "error";
	}
}
?>