Whats the best way to display your email address

May 6th, 2008, 9:59 pm

I not sure if there really is a safe way to display your email on your website with out spam bots and spiders getting a hold of it and then bombing you with all that crap. I was just wondering what ways some of you all do it, and what seems to be effective or somewhat effective.

I seen some sites do something like soandso AT dot com or soandso[AT][dot]com and so forth. That might be a pretty effective way, but does it look professional, or would it be considered convient, as some peope might want an actual link to click and open up their email program.

Anyways thats my question for the night.

May 7th, 2008, 2:39 am

I prefer it to rather be a PHP or ASP or even Flash Mail form where you have a textbox and the email gets sent to you directly ...

[ATNO/TW]

May 7th, 2008, 2:46 am

This isn't 100% foolproof but works fairly well
http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

May 7th, 2008, 9:55 am

thats basicly Obfuscate your email address right ATNO/TW?

I just found another one that does that w/out form. Personal prefrence of mine is not use forms to have users contact me for the simple reason alot of times when a visitor emails you that way it could get filed into a junk folder then it might be days or never that you see their message to you.

That could be bad if its a client trying to contact you about something or someone wanting you to do some work for them and a few days past since they tried to contact you they might go else where.

Just how I see it so for that reason I like to find someway to be able to use a mailto link. But thinking about what I just wrote I guess the same will happen with that it could end up in the junk file.

anyways thanks for the replies

[ATNO/TW]

May 7th, 2008, 10:31 am

CStrauss wrote:

thats basicly Obfuscate your email address right ATNO/TW?

correct

[SB]

May 8th, 2008, 9:04 am

The only other option i could suggest is to add your email address as a graphic. The only major downside to this is the fact people wouldn't be able to click on the email address to email you and would have to manually type in the email address.

Alternatively adding just the domain name as example[at]example.com could help.

As for avoiding genuine emails heading into the spam folder, it's not something that anyone can really avoid. I often receive genuine emails which go into the spam folder and i've tried various ways in which to avoid this by still showing the email address.

ATNO/TW's suggestion so far does appear to be the best option at the moment.

[jameson5555]

May 8th, 2008, 1:44 pm

righteous_trespasser wrote:

I prefer it to rather be a PHP or ASP or even Flash Mail form where you have a textbox and the email gets sent to you directly ...

You know what's weird? I have both my actual email and a contact form on this page. I've never gotten any spam at the email address, but I get spammed daily from that contact form for some reason.

May 12th, 2008, 6:21 am

you need to put a image or logical captcha on your form jameson, otherwise spamming through it will only grow.

[jameson5555]

May 12th, 2008, 7:02 am

jbladeus wrote:

you need to put a image or logical captcha on your form jameson, otherwise spamming through it will only grow.

Really? Is that the best way to do it these days, where you have them type in the combination of letters they see before they can send a comment?

May 12th, 2008, 1:04 pm

yea captcha is the way to go but make it case sensitive to make it trickier

May 12th, 2008, 3:05 pm

gt8ost4l wrote:

yea captcha is the way to go but make it case sensitive to make it trickier

IlIlIl

That may be too tricky... don't

[jameson5555]

May 13th, 2008, 7:31 am

Yeah, I definitely don't want to boil the ocean.. I just want to stop getting all these "Nice site! Check out these links:" emails.

May 13th, 2008, 9:53 am

well i'm trying my luck with Obfuscate my email. Has anyone used this technique and had sucess the option I just thought of reading this post is using a form like you mentioned and use captcha image.

Speaking of the capatcha image I was in a book store reading a book on PHP 6, and in there it had section on making these type of forms but it also mention that some spam bots can get through that image now. Has that happen to anyone yet to?

May 13th, 2008, 3:48 pm

CStrauss wrote:

well i'm trying my luck with Obfuscate my email. Has anyone used this technique and had sucess the option I just thought of reading this post is using a form like you mentioned and use captcha image.

Speaking of the capatcha image I was in a book store reading a book on PHP 6, and in there it had section on making these type of forms but it also mention that some spam bots can get through that image now. Has that happen to anyone yet to?

I use a PHP form... I forgot to put captcha on it... going to do that... before I make my site public