Hiding an email

[adaykin]

Hello, I am trying to get an email script to work, with the address hidden here it is:

<?php $email = [e-mail]?>

<a href="mailto:<?=$email;?>">Email Me</a>

However, this shows as a link, but when I click on "Email Me", I don't get anything..

[bradgrafelman]

How is that hidden in any way, shape, or form?

[adaykin]

well hidden from bots...I tried changing the script to:

<?php
$me = [e-mail];
echo "<p><a href='mailto:".$me."'>Email me</a></p>";
?>

but I think the dot and the @ in the email is messing it up, how would I work around this?

[bradgrafelman]

It's not hidden in any way, though. This:

<?php
$me = '[e-mail]';
echo "<p><a href='mailto:".$me."'>Email me</a></p>";
?>

is absolutely no different than this:

<p><a href='mailto:[e-mail]'>Email me</a></p>

In either case, the email is simply being outputted in the HTML code. (Also note your error - [e-mail] is a string of data, thus it should be delimited as all strings are, with double quotes... just like the strings in the echo statement).

[adaykin]

Putting quotes around the email variable won't solve it, there is still a dot, which is messing up the other string... Won't bots search for the source code on the page? Or will they still be able to see that?

[bradgrafelman]

adaykin wrote:

Putting quotes around the email variable won't solve it, there is still a dot, which is messing up the other string

Not sure what you mean... my code snippet above has no parse errors, so could you post what you're trying?

adaykin wrote:

Won't bots search for the source code on the page? Or will they still be able to see that?

What do you mean by "source code"? If you mean the HTML, then yes... that's all "bots" or browsers alike can see. So it doesn't matter if you're using PHP to output the HTML or if you're simply using a plain .html file; either way, the e-mail is outputted in the HTML, unobfuscated, for bots and browsers alike to parse and do as they will.

[adaykin]

So you were able to successfully output the email? I wanna see what you tried. My code is what I posted, except with quotes around the email variables.

[bradgrafelman]

I tried exactly what I posted above... I put this into a PHP script:

<?php
$me = '[e-mail]';
echo "<p><a href='mailto:".$me."'>Email me</a></p>";
?>

, executed the PHP script, and got this as output:

<p><a href='mailto:[e-mail]'>Email me</a></p>

Again, looking at the output should make it obvious why this is doing nothing to "hide" or obfuscate an e-mail address.

[NogDog]

In case it's not clear to you yet, bots do not view your PHP source code. They access your pages via HTTP requests just like your browser does, and then they "see" the [X]HTML text that is output by the web server (after any server-side scripts have run). Thus when they spider a link, they see the same thing any browser would see.

[adaykin]

Here is my code:

<?php
$me = '[e-mail]';
echo "<p><a href='mailto:".$me."'>Email me</a></p>";
?> 

And here is yours:

<?php
$me = '[e-mail]';
echo "<p><a href='mailto:".$me."'>Email me</a></p>";
?> 

I don't see any difference

http://andydaykin.com/email.html is an example of it on a page.

when you click on the email link look at what the address is.

edit: do I have to have it in a .php page, or can it be embedded in an .html page?

[bradgrafelman]

That's because you saved the page as a .html file, so the PHP code isn't being parsed by your server.

That's why you can view the source of the page and see the raw PHP code, something you could never do on a PHP-enabled server (assuming you actually run the file through the PHP parser, e.g. by using a .php extension).