Posts tagged web programming

Hide Your Website Email Address from Spam Bots

Do you want to hide the email address you use for your website to stop spammers from harvesting it?

If you want your viewers to be able to contact you, then you must have a “mailto” link containing your email address on your web pages.

But this causes a big problem: spammers want your email address. So they send out a robot with the mission of finding and capturing all the addresses it can. This is done by examining the HTML code used by browsers to render each webpage. All the bot has to do is save the email address it finds in your “mailto” link.

The two most common methods of “hiding” the email address:

* Munging. In this method, the email address is not put in a link. Rather it is supposedly hidden from the bots by substituting words for various parts of the address. Example: johndoe AT hotmail DOT com

* Encoding. The most common code used is standard ASCII code. Each letter or symbol in the email address is replaced by its equivalent. A simplified address a @ b.com would be coded as:

& #97; & #64; & #98; & #46; & #99; & #111; & #109; ( spaces were put in to prevent the browser from printing the actual address )

The “mailto:” link can still be used, because the browser will recognize the code and print out the real email address on the page.

But these methods no longer work.

I remember when these methods worked fine, but that is no longer the case. Hackers have “smartened-up” their robots, so they can now decrypt each of the above codes.

These two methods by no means exhaust the possibilities. A Google search on “hide email address” turns up over two million results. Even discounting duplicate methods, there are undoubtedly quite a few ingenious techniques available.

So what is the next step for me?

Without going through all of the Google entries, I can predict beyond a reasonable doubt that the method I use myself does a better job of protecting your email address than any other. How can I be so sure? Because I doubt that any hacker would have the time or skill to write a bot that would allow him to grab my email address — it’s that well hidden!

My method has the email address in the middle of a javascript, which is in turn located off the webpage itself, in a file that’s located in a different folder. So the robot would need to discover both the name of the folder and the name of the file. Yet even though the address is not located anywhere in the HTML code of the page, it DOES appear – almost like magic – on the page itself. But a robot doesn’t have eyes to see it!

I hear you saying, “But that’s impossible!” Well, it’s not. Just visit the website in the paragraph below, and you can find out how it’s done.

Visit the author’s website, Professor’s Coding Corner for some useful code snippets and tutorials on interesting facets of web programming. In particular, the article, Stop Spambots will show you the best way to protect your website.

How to Set Up Your First Website

Setting up a good-looking, functioning website can be a daunting task for someone who has never done it before. There are quite a few things that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with so that you get get your first site set up in no time.

First of all its important to know about the components of a website and how it actually functions. If learned in the proper context it will make a lot of sense and you wont have to go through the frustration of trying to figure it out on your own.

To set up your first website you need to take care of two basic technicalities. First you need to get hosting. Hosting is provided by a hosting company and they essentially house all the files that you want displayed on the internet. Any computer can be a host but we pay hosting companies because they make sure that your website is always online and that their computers never have any issues. Its very cheap and usually very cheap. Anywhere from $5-$10/month.

The second technical requirement you need to take care of is your domain name. The biggest domain name registrar is GoDaddy and is the company I always go with because they have great service and its easy to use. The domain is the www.domainname.com part of your website.

To connect your hosting account with your domain name you’ll need to get a hold of your nameservers from your hosting account. The hosting company will usually send you those in their welcome email. Take those and plug them into your domain name account and then wait a few minutes. Soon enough they’ll be connected and you’ll be nearly there.

The next step is install your content management system (CMS). Go into your hosting account and find the “fantastico” button. Open that up and you’ll be given a list of a lot of different CMS’s. These are programs that let you manage your websites really easily and many of them without having to deal with code. I usually go with WordPress but it really depends on what kind of website you’re going for.

After you have your CMS installed you’ve done it! The last thing to do now is to simply add content!

Learn more about Thrive Learning Institute. Stop by Terry Roper’s site where you can find out all about Thrive Institute of Learning and what it can do for you.

How Using Scripts For Your Website Can Increase Your Sites Popularity

Using scripts for your website can be a great idea. There are many options available for you too. Scripts can do practically anything you want them to. You can get scripts for free, but the quality might not be as good as scripts that you pay for. Scripts that you pay for can also be much better at performing the tasks they are designed for and at helping you create a great website.

Scripts are a great way to increase the functionality of any website. You can make wonderful additions to your online business by using scripts. You can use scripts to sell products quickly and easily online. Scripts can completely automate your online business. You can provide various types of media in a simple and user-friendly way through the use of scripts. There are scripts that can help you host files and share large quantities of information with your guests. There are scripts that you can use to add search capability to your website. Scripts can even be used to increase your revenue stream from ads.

Scripts are commonly used to increase the user’s ability to communicate with other users. When you go into a forum online, you will see many different types of scripts being used. Webmasters also like to use scripts to improve their ability to monitor the traffic on their website.

You may be worried about scripts being too complicated. Scripts for your website will actually make the construction and design process of your website much simpler. By using scripts, you will be automating various parts of your website. Many scripts can also help you simplify the layout of your design. This is why scripts are commonly used for complex websites, because they simplify the process of providing content.

People who have no experience in building websites can use scripts and build websites that are comparable to what web gurus have. Scripts take the hassle out of designing and organizing websites. But should you have trouble with installation, there are professionals who will be happy to do this task for you at a reasonable fee.

The value that you can get by using a good script may be extensive. Just by using one script, you could increase your profits. Experiment a bit with different kinds of scripts to help you decide what you really want on your website.

Many webmasters use scripts to help them learn the way their visitors are moving around their site. By using this information, they can increase the effectiveness of their ads. When you keep track of the traffic on your website, you will be able to fine-tune each aspect of your layout and design. When you understand what is happening on your website, you are in a better position to manage and handle your traffic. That’s why scripts are great for improving your website’s quality.

No matter what type of website script you are looking for, there is likely a solution available for you. There are many scripts that can improve your website and increase your profits. There are also scripts that you can use in unique ways to make your site special. When it comes to scripts for your website, the choice is yours. And to avoid all of the hassle, you should visit a website that gives you help both in deciding what scripts to use, and in finding easily-installed scripts for you. Check out the resource box below.

Looking for scripts for your website? I will only give you scripts that I have personally tested and found to be easy-to-use. You can see lots of them being used right on my own scripts for websites blog.

3 Spots Where Your Favicon is Shown

Do you want to see all the places where a favicon can be displayed? Then, just follow along, and I’ll show you.

Let me give you two URLs. They happen to be two of my favorite websites, but most likely you’ve never heard of either of them. If you do happen to have visited one of them before, just pick the other one for this demonstration. That’s so you can watch the favicon come up out of nowhere when your browser finds it and puts it where it’s supposed to go. I’ll give you the URLS, but you need to wait! Don’t do anything until I tell you!

URL1: www.stormcarib.com

URL2: www.triddlers.com

1st Place: the Address Bar

All right. Let’s go. The first thing I want you to do is open a new tab ( or new window if you have to ). Now type in your URL in the Address Bar. Look quick – there’s the favicon! It’s just to the left of what you just typed in.

2nd Place: the Tab Bar

Are you using a tabbed browser, like Firefox or a later version of Internet Explorer? Then you should also see the favicon to the left of the website title in the tab bar.

3rd Place: Bookmarks or Favorites

I asked you to pick a URL you haven’t visited, so you obviously won’t find it in your favorites yet. Put it there by clicking ‘Favorites’, then ‘Add to Favorites’. Next, click the ‘Add’ button. When you return to ‘Favorites’, your new addition will be at the bottom of the list. Its favicon should be next to it.

If you have recently made a favicon of your own, and it doesn’t appear in any of the three places where it should be, don’t despair! This happens all the time. Here’s what to do:

1) Clear your cache.

2) If you still can’t find your favicon, close and reopen your browser.

3) If that fails also, then there can be only two reasons: a) The browser that you’re using doesn’t use favicons at all, which is not very likely, or b) Your favicon is FAKE!

Just because is says ‘favicon.ico’, that doesn’t make it a REAL favicon. Make sure that you create a favicon properly, so that it can work properly. See below for more information.

Let me show you where to go to create a favicon for use on your own website. Visit my blog at ScriptsForYourWebsite.com for lots of great easy-to-use plugins and scripts for your own blog.