Poll: Do you use forms on your Web sites?
Thursday November 30, 2006
I'm finding that forms on my Web site are generating more spam than they are helping improve my site. But I still use them.
Do you use forms to get customer interaction or feedback on your Web site?
Comments
I have tried to use forms on the server that the company uses that I work for.
The Perl worked on my laptop, but not on their server, which their site is hosted by SBC. I had the hardest time figuring out what was wrong with my code, but in the end found out that the company had the cheapest account that SBC had and would not support any sort of database. I did learn a lesson on that one.
Corky, yes, this can often be a challenge. You would laugh if you knew how many “text” databases I built to run Web sites. These were just tab or comma separated text files to hold data that the Web pages would update or simply use to display data. It was an ugly solution, but it worked if I had access to Perl.
With how cheap hosting is these days, it’s gotten easier to convince clients/management to spend the $5-20/month and get a basic, but feature-rich hosting account. I’ve run into this problem too many times, and I’ve learned not to accept “sorry, we don’t want to switch hosts” as an excuse.
I use a Perl mail handling script which is easy to use and adapt to almost any web site. The only very annoying problem is form-spam. I get dozens each day for the same garbage that comes in email spam. I have tried changing the name of the program but that did not help. Any ideas?
Mary
Yes, I use php forms on all websites, but
every day I get more and more spam.
I always am surprised how are not safe php scripts. Why nobody who write php scripts, suggest how to unhide e-mail in php scripts.
This would be very useful
Mary: Yes, form spam is a HUGE problem. I get 30-100 bogus spam messages for every valid submission. It makes it very difficult.
Right now I’m investigating methods like “captcha” and other challenge response tools to help deal with form spam. When I figure something out for my site, I’ll be writing it up so that we can all benefit.
But if anyone here has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.