Forum Moderators: phranque
Strange question but - we have a techie who handles the in-house tech stuff for our client, and he'd like us to create the various email addresses listed on the site as a graphic, which would direct to a contact form vs. just open up a window to send email.
It's not overly hard to do - we just type it out in text, screen-grab that, cut it down and paste it back in. But I'm wondering if will REALLY cut down on spam or not? Enough to justify the effort...?
Anyone have any experience with this?
That would keep the bots blind but if the email harverster is doing it by hand (as if anybody would) they will catch it.
I don't particularly like the email forms, because I feel some people preffer a direct email instead of filling a form online.
Besides, the spam rate will also depends on what your customers will do with their emails. (who they give it to).
Overtime, there is almost nothing you can do to prevent spam.
Yes, I agree in the long-term nothing will stop it. I guess I'd like to be able to say, "well, it wasn't our fault!" :-)
Say, Ally!
Now that's interesting - on our own personal website, we have our email displayed prominently on every page, and its not a graphic, just good ol' fashioned clickable for the spammer harvesters to eat up...
BUT we do have a contact form on the site - which is on every page below the email, and each page leads to it eventually if you read them "in order" (hitting the "next" button below) and so far over the 11 months I implimented the form, 99% of the contacts I've had have been through the form - no one uses my direct email, even though they could? [One guy did in all that time, that was it.] And, YES, I've checked to see that the email is working, and it is...always has been. :-)
The other benefit to having a form is that people without an email client - people in a library or university for example - could still contact the client via email.
Yeah, if it was just me I'd do BOTH - have the normal address like we do + a contact form. Guess we'll just have to see. I can always tell the client that "if they aren't getting enough email contacts we can switch the emails back to NOT direct people through the form".
Should also mention the form is simple. Complex forms do NOT get filled out, I have to agree with this from experience. The fewer fields I used, the more info I got from people!
Thanks for all your feedback!
Something else I've noticed from one of my sites is that while many humans and all email harvesters cannot read german, most humans can figure out what you mean if you put your address as "postmaster 'auf' widget 'punkt' de". Or you can get even more creative, viz "postmaster auf 'w i d g e t' punkt 'd e' "... Other non-english languages probably work well, too..
"ebmasterway atay idgetway otday omcay" :)
