Do you recommend that I avoid mailto: links on my Web pages?

I use a java based program that hides the address, seems to work good.

Any chance of an example CGI script, similar to your "inject-query.cgi", since obviously we can't look at that! My webpage has a guestbook, which uses a CGI script that presumably operates along similar lines to your contact script (it's a moderated guestbook, so I'm emailed with entries), but it would be nice to see a professional's version!

Actually, I present almost exactly the same Perl CGI script in my book Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML and CSS :-)

I think this contact form is a great approach. but, i'm not sure how to create one - for use with a blog that is hosted using typepad. any suggestions? thanks.

That's a tough one, Neal. You might contact the TypePad sysadmins and ask them if it's possible to get a custom version of the CGI form (because you don't want your email address embedded in the HTML source of the form, because then, again, it something that theoretically can be scraped by spammers).

Hmmm... If they can't give you something custom (which I bet is the case) then why not suggest that they add a few lines of Perl to the existing script so that you could disassemble your email address and send it as two or three variables, rather than one obvious email address.

I'm thinking something like this:

    neal@typepad.com

would be sent as:

<input type="hidden" name="em_name" value="neal">
<input type="hidden" name="em_domain" value="typepad">
<input type="hidden" name="em_tld" value="com">

Nice, simple, easy to implement, and it would keep away all but the most enthused of spammers.

Good luck and please let us know what happens!

Neal, if my understanding of Typepad is correct, you need to have Typepad Pro in order to fiddle with things at this level in the code.

If anyone needs a PHP script for this, you can have mine. I've been considering cleaning it up a bit and putting it in one of the PHP script repositories as public domain code. A sample is here:

http://www.vardaman.org/contact

Shout at me if you want it. I'm at mailto:...uhh...scratch that. :)

It checks input on the server side. A few possible enhancements would be some client-side javascript checking, and maybe using javascript's focus() to set the cursor on the field that needs editing.

I would be happy to provide any of Dave's readers a PHP script also that takes form input and emails it to an email address. The script includes Javascript that checks that all required form fields are filled in as well. If interested, checkout the Contact Scott link on my web page and use it to Contact me. :)

I had a cgi script that it read from a list.txt file hidden in the cgi-bin that had all my URL's the http: and the mailto: and it was very simple , I lost my script and can't find it no where on the web. This was like 7 years ago I had over 1000 pages and emails listed including links to other websites and all in a simple list and the anchor tag pointed to the script and then outputed the URL to the email program or the browser. Can you help me find this script or help me understand how to create this simple simple little script which is lost somewhere on the web? This is the best way I know of that would hide all your links on any webpages as long as you had cgi access and this simple script that read from a txt file which was just a list of your links. Thank's

You could ostensibly accomplish something like what you say, Jeffrey, with a service like http://www.microURL.com/ but it's sure be a ton of work...

Thank Dave, I looked but its like you said "a ton of work" I wish I new what the script was called , all I can remember was like gofetch or something where the anchor tag had a name value and pointed to the script then it ran through the list and found the name and then produced the URL and used the print function,

I found this but I think its for a form with the option tag but its a start

here is the code I found, hope it makes sense..

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

require("cgi-lib.cgi");
&ReadParse;

open(FILEHANDLE,")
{
$line =~ s/\n//g;

($product,$goto) = split(/\|/, $line);
if($product eq $in{'gofetch'})
{
close FILEHANDLE;
print "Location: $goto\n\n";
exit;
}
}

this is all I can find but I am not sure how to put an anchor tag to it, I got the option tag within the form tag to work and the list.txt is all in single colum like this..

well first the option tag looks like
AOL
MSN
Yahoo

then the list.txt is formatted like this

AOL|http://www.aol.com/
MSN|http://www.msn.com/
Yahoo|http://www.yahoo.com/

and this works in a form tag but its not the anchor tag like I had but real close to what I had . so can this be rewritten to use the name attribute in a Anchor tag to call the list up in the script somehow... I tried everything and know it must work somehow because I had a script that would fetch stuff and it was meant to hide emails along time ago when evil-bots appeared.. thanks Dave for any help you got, if you can't figure it out then I will just give up because no one is as smart hehehe okay ... thanks again

Dave I am looking for a contact screen with some security like you have developed. This is for a church site. Where can I get the HTML code to embed into the Church Web Site? I currently have pulled in 2 different contact screens but they are not secure.

Not sure what you're seeking, Randy. Are you trying to avoid spam coming into your system? Are you seeking a "human verification system" like my little math equation?

Dave I noticed that on your site you have a checkbox as your "human verification system", how does one go about setting either a checkbox or a math equation password type of security. Im using Dreamweaver MX 2004.

Hi,

I'm getting spammed by the viagra dude.. 100 forms sent a day.

I think the addition question would help get rid of him.

Can you please help me put the addition question on my form:

http://www.aircharterbahamas.com/pages/request.html

THANKS MAN..

Cliff

Don't let spammers stop you from putting mailto links on your site. There are lots of solutions to get around spiders and harvesters. Try http://www.spamshiv.com/solutions/forms.php. There are some good ideas on this site that I've used with success.

very helpful.
thank you