Jim Scott said the following on 07/06/2005 18:15:
Is there a way to have a button or other link to email me from the website
without the webcrawlers harvesting me for spam?
Currently I use a .jpg to display my email address, but of course it does
not serve as a direct link.
I am on a good commercial host, although I have a private site. Many
services are built into the control panel, and it just takes a few key
clicks to set up many things that are built in. I set up cgi form mail
that is built in. When you select form mail at the control panel, the
required cgi code is written into your cgi bin, and you are given text
instructions, including examples. You just have to modify one of their
standard html pages for the form. You select any pop mail address at
your domain that you wish. When you need a mail link on a page, you
just link to the form page you modified. The domain allows many pop
mail accounts. When the one used for the form mail attracts too much
spam, you just delete it and create a new one that you use on the form
mail page. This only takes about 2 minutes. Server side is the way to
go, if you can. I would discourage most people from writing their own
server side mail script. Even if you can write good code, you will have
to avoid many things that hackers take advantage of. If they can get
in, hackers love Javascript, they like ActiveX even more, and server
side scripts are the best of all. Some of them love to deface pages
with crude images and such. Some have been able to bring a whole server
down - mainly servers of small hosts. Although I will never use the
shopping carts and secure pages offered by my host, it is nice to have
a huge selection of features built in, most at no extra cost. And a
good commercial host often is no more expensive than a small mom and
pop host with very limited features on their server.