Q: Why are there no e-mail links on any of the sites you design?

A: In years past, web developers put links to email addresses on web sites because there were very few reliable ways to provide an electronic contact link. That link would tell the browsers computer to open the mail program they use (like Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora) and start an e-mail to the person indicated in the link.

Times have drastically changed.

The first thing we have noticed is that people who send out SPAM, junk e-mail encouraging you to visit sites designed to sell anatomical enhancing medications, porn sites, out of country pharmacy sites and more, these people write programs that harvest those e-mails from the Internet by the thousands, even millions.

Many times I hear web site owners complain that they get so much SPAM. The first thing I ask if they have their e-mail address published on their site. The people that get the most SPAM either have it published or used to have it published. These harvesting programs are the reason for such large amounts of SPAM.

Secondly, more and more people are turning their e-mail over to web based mail systems. These are systems like Yahoo, gMail, MSN, AOL and many many others that do not use an e-mail program located on a computer. These e-mail systems operate on web pages themselves.

When one of these growing millions of people click on the e-mail link located on a web page, they get errors or other problems.

In response to this, many web masters have turned to form-to-mail forms. Forms that are sent to the site owners e-mail address. This ensures that ANYONE that needs to contact the site owner can do so with a simple click. There is very little that can stop it.

There are many of these form-to-mail scripts available, but many still publish the e-mail address in the HTML that may be hidden from the casual browser, but can still be harvested by web savvy SPAMmers.

Sand Dollar Digital Design has develped their own script that not only keeps your e-mail address from SPAMmers and harvesters, but also provides a stable place for any of your potential visitors to contact you, no matter what type of e-mail system they may use.