Spam-Safe Your Website

May 23, 2007 - 3:00pm

I got a spam email the other day that looked like this

The unusual thing about this email is that it was sent to me through a from on one of my sites, which means that someone somewhere wrote a spam-bot that crawls through the internet and fills out forms. Your website may have grown to the point where you get regular visits from bots, either good ones from search engines who are indexing your site, or the bad ones from malicious spammers. This can be particularly bad if you're running a message board or open forum. You could spend hours searching out and deleting their pesky posts.

But fear not, today I'll show you three things you can change on your website that can help alleviate the annoying spam, including a spam-safe alternative to the traditional web form. By the way, this tutorial is aimed at PHP and JavaScript users but the techniques involved can be applied to any other platform. I'll also assume you have basic knowledge about PHP and forms in general.

1. Show your email address as an image
2. Use a security code in web forms
3. Format the email so you can easily spot spam - (comming soon)