Contact management web application?

July 25, 2005 8:27 AM

Can anybody recommend a good, free, preferably open source php-mysql contact management web application I can install on my own server?
posted by monju_bosatsu to computers & internet (14 comments total)

To provide an accurate answer, we probably should know the operating system of your server (windows, linux, os x).
posted by spock at 9:20 AM on July 25, 2005

No personal experience with this one, but it appears to be Highly Rated: Brim- contacts:

Description: Webbased contact management including vCard and opera import/export functionality and the ability to share your contacts with others. The application also has support for bookmarks, a calendar, news feeds, notes, tasks, passwords management and more. In short: A webbased Personal Information Manager (PIM)

posted by spock at 9:27 AM on July 25, 2005

Forgot to note that the above app works on Windows OR Linux.
posted by spock at 9:28 AM on July 25, 2005

I've never run it myself, but I've heard good things about Mambo.
posted by purephase at 10:30 AM on July 25, 2005

Contact, not content.
posted by yerfatma at 10:58 AM on July 25, 2005

Also, would LDAP fit the bill here? There are plenty of clients that can talk to it and it's pretty well future-proofed (compared to simply supporting current closed standards).
posted by yerfatma at 11:00 AM on July 25, 2005

Sorry, ignore my comment. I misread your question.
posted by purephase at 11:03 AM on July 25, 2005

yerfatma --
do you have any links to a good UI for a local LDAP server like this? I am attracted to LDAP (conceptually) for my own contact management, but googling LDAP gives lots of stuff not-what-i-want. Mostly university or corporate level stuff.

good question; i will be watching this thread...
posted by misterbrandt at 11:19 AM on July 25, 2005

if you have not looked at sugar yet, you are missing out..
posted by dhammala at 6:03 PM on July 25, 2005

Sugar is pretty impressive, but significantly over-featured for what I need. If anybody is still watching this thread, how do you keep a centrally-maintained list of your contacts?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:10 AM on July 26, 2005

monju -- I too was hoping for an answer from this thread. My contacts are currently a mess -- mostly in an old Outlook PST, but I haven't used in outlook in over a year. I have been looking (as have you) for a web-based solution I can hsot on my own web server (or home server), but no luck so far.

i was about 2 days into building my own php/mysql thing for this, but i got overwhelmed by my own slickness, trying to make all the addresses and emails and telephone #s relational.

As an interim option, i have been wondering about a dumb-simple password-protected page on my server, with everyone's info in tabular format. Using firefox, I can locate anyone with find-as-you-type, and for browsers other than IE you can extensively restyle tabular data to look like rolodex cards or whatever (I have a testpage for this, but it is not on a live server at the moment). Then, a simple PHP script to open the page for editing (load page content into a textile-aware[so that it is easy to deal with the table code soup] textarea) or not, for viewing.

It will be easy to parse this out into a database whenever a good solution comes along.

Of course, I haven't built it yet. So I keep going back and firing up outlook when I need somebody's address. Or i email them and ask them for it. :)
posted by misterbrandt at 4:36 PM on July 26, 2005

I've scrapped the idea of trying a DIY solution, and instead I'm going to commit to using Plaxo, at least for now. Credit goes to this old AskMe thread.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:01 PM on July 27, 2005

a good UI for a local LDAP server like this

I dunno how good it is (not having used it myself), but Thunderbird (and other email applications) can be used as a front-end.
posted by yerfatma at 7:02 AM on August 1, 2005

I use my Palm and keep it in sync with my desktop. :)
posted by dhammala at 9:50 AM on August 11, 2005