Thanks for the suggestions about SquirrelMail and Telaen, I am looking into getting a web server with PHP set up inhouse here to support them.

 Meanwhile the SMTP problem is solved it was an issue with the way our firewall was set, it only allows connections from our ISP's relay system.   They have a secure SMTP relay we can use so that is what we are doing as the firewall setting would seem to give us extra security.   Thanks for all the help we got on this.

I have been asked to make webmail or at least remote access available to my users, they want to be able to reply to customers using  bloggs.co.uk type addresses rather than johno@hotmail.com type addresses.   I have already successfully tested IMAP access to my own mailbox from home and plan to set up strict SMTP relaying and then test that from home too.   Is this the best way to do it or is there another way to provide webmail or remote access via Mercury?

IMAP is the way to go for this.  Depending on your users, that might be all you need to do.

If you want to set up webmail as well, there are several packages you could use, (they access mails through IMAP too) among them - SquirrelMail, Ilohamail, Roundcube.  If you need specific help on one of them, you may find people here with experience, or you could checkout their own websites and forums.

search for webmail on this site, and you'll find links to a number of packages that M/32 admins have set up.

I did do a search for webmail before posting this and unless I missed something it did not turn up and links to any threads about how anyone else had it.

 On re reading the SMTP help though I note its autentication I need to use rather than strict relaying so I'm testing that.

Currently I can offer my users remote log in to our server via IMAP and sending Via SMTP.

 I am quite reluctant to allow this from a public computer even assuming such machines allowed access to an email client because I'm worried about account details being cached, recorded or whatever and misused.   I wonder if the same might not apply to a webmail portal.   I presume that people who offer hosted webmail services have some kind of solution to this problem.

 Thanks for the help and advice so far.
 

see thread http://community.pmail.com/forums/thread/1420.aspx, some people spell webmail clients as web mail clients...

I still have a problem with SMTP from offsite.   I had set up a SMPT users file with a test account which worked fine when I tested it from a system on our network however from outside using the same account I just get a one line error report.   The error message was something like 15: Peer connect failure (the host has refused the connection).  I say somethin like because betweem my initial testing and copying the message I had reticked the do not relay non local mail checkbox.   In any case the message is just one line and different from what I got when I was testing internally with a mistyped password!

Is this likely to be a setting on our firewall or have a forgotten to do something to Mercury?   I have contacted our ISP about the firewall but while I am waiting for a reply I thought perhaps I should ask here too.

most likely port 25 is closed within the firewall. Test from a command prompt, type "telnet hostname 25"

If  you get an answer, identifying your Mercury/32, port 25 is open all the way through.

Thanks Peter I will use that to double check.   I've finally been told by our ISP that the firewall is set up only to accept connections and traffic from a specific IP address so unless we ask them to undo that bit of protection for us looks like its a no go.

 I presume for hostname I use our firewall IP address?   Perhaps I will try the <smtp.domain name> as well.
 

you use the host name that is mapped to the ip where your mercury installation resides, not the firewall.

I use Telaen with Mercury. [ http://www.telaen.org/ ] a PHP based WebMail