September 14, 2009 - The Woodlands, TX - Web sites that have email addresses on their Contact Us page are just an open invitation for a web bot to harvest the address, and add it to a giant list of "good" email addresses, which is then sold to spammers. What typically follows is a deluge of spam messages for everything you can imagine and one unhappy client. One effective way to combat these unsolicited email messages is to add a reply box to the page that requires a human to enter a code that cannot be read by a machine, but is simple for a human to respond to. We wrote a script specifically for our Expression Engine customers and it has been very effective, so we decided to create a commercially available plug-in that you can easily add to your Expression Engine site or blog for under $10.
The plug-in dynamically hides html from users and asks them to enter the correct "entry code number" before they can view the html. This plug in uses no JavaScript or CSS just a form post to determine if the person entered the correct number.
Live example here http://chanticleer-yacht.com/index.php/contact/
How to install the plug in:
- FTP in to your site browse to the "system" folder ( or whatever you renamed your system folder to )
- Open the "plugins" folder
- Upload the "pi.mailguard.php" to that folder
How to use the plug in:
Put this tag in your Expression Engine template:
"
{exp:mailguard:hide}
file_path='D:/live_websites/foobar/images/captchas/'
html_path='website.com/images/captchas/'
instructions='Enter the Number In the Box' }
Stuff you want hidden
{ /exp:mailguard:hide}
"
file_path is the full path to the place you want it to save the images.
html_path is the web path to the same location as the file path
instructions is what is shown only before a turning number has been entered
Link to the discission about the plug-in on the expression engine forums http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/122786/
If you like it and want to order it, you can buy and download it in the epic store
Posted by Anthony on September 14, 2009
More Shareing Options
