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Whatever your need, Will Bontrager builds powerful software solutions.
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Whatever your need, Will Bontrager builds powerful software solutions.
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Using a mailto: Link When Soliciting RecommendationsBy Will Bontrager There seems to be heightening resistance to giving out email addresses. And there is a slowdown of "recommend me" form use. As an alternative to a form, the mailto: link can be used effectively when asking people to recommend your web site or a certain web page. Unlike most mailto: links, no email address is published that spammers' spiders can harvest. The friend's email address is known only to the person who knows the friend. In the mailto: link, use FRIEND EMAIL HERE in lieu of an email address. After clicking on the link, your visitor should notice the "FRIEND EMAIL HERE" and replace it with the correct email address. If not noticed, the visitor's email software will report it as an error so it can be fixed. The downside is that you don't know when a recommendation occurs, like you could with a recommend form. You can, however, count clicks on the link with software like ProLinkz™ or gather statistics about all links on a web page with software like ClickWatch™. Anther downside (or maybe it's an upside, as the activity seems to be one reason for the development of wholesale form-shyness), is that you can't make a record of addresses for later mailings. With the mailto: link, you are providing a clickable method of recommending your web site which negates the resistance to dropping email addresses into forms. Here is an example: Subject, Cc, Bcc, and/or body content can also be specified in the mailto:link. (Note that the behavior of those specifications, especially the body content, will vary with operating system/browser/email software combinations.) Here is an example with subject and body pre-filled in. The above produces this link, which you may use to recommend this blog to your friends. Click to email a friend about this web site (we never see the email). We appreciate your recommendations — a lot! Thank you. February 3, 2006 Please note: Articles on this website are presented "as is". However - If you have a question about a CGI script, HTML, CSS, PHP, or JavaScript
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