Vanessa Wood
Design to Spec LLC – Website Design in Darien, CT
TIP#13 – Reduce SPAM by using a contact form on your website for email contact.
You’ve got a website… part of the design decision was to reduce spam by including a Contact Form rather your email address where every spammer and hacker on the Internet could see it. Despite the form, your SPAM has only grown! It’s time to see why.
Let’s do a self-check of your form.
Open your website online and go to the webpage that contains your email form. Click on VIEW at the top of the screen and select SOURCE (or depending upon your browser “Source Page”) from the drop down menu. Now you’re looking at the code of your website. It all looks like jibberish, eh? This is code behind your website.
Use CTRL + F to search this source information for your email address. This should be the address to which the form sends your email. Did you find it in the source code?
If you can find your email address, so can the unscrupulous spammers and email hackers! They use sophisticated programs that pull your email address our of the source code not just what is seen on the web page.
A good form either hides or scrambles your email address. Design to Spec can help with good form solutions.
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EXTRA!
Top 3 Uses for A Web Form
1. Contact Form – allows email contact from online users.
2. Registration or Intake Form – longer than a basic contact from, some businesses use this form to collect information from their clients. The form is delivered to the website owner by email or to a database.
3. Subscription Form – Constant Contact users are familiar with forms used for newsletter sign ups. This form delivers subscriber information to a database.
What kind of information would you like to collect on your website?
