**UPDATE** I’ve released a slightly modified version of this into a plugin that has a TinyMCE button. You can get it here.
Folks that have been on the web for any length of time know that putting your email address on a forward-facing website is just asking for spam. While Gmail and other providers are pretty good at flagging them, it’s still an unnecessary burden, especially if you are using your own mailserver. But for many businesses and sites, you’ve gotta have it out there. So what to do?
The folks over at catswhocode recently published a post with a handful of WP shortcodes, one of which was obfuscating an email address using a convoluted regex and count method. Well, you could do that. But why not use a built-in WP function?
WordPress has an antispambot function that’s been in core since version 0.71. The only problem is that you can’t use it in a post, page, or widget on it’s own. So I’ve written a simple shortcode to allow you to call that function wherever you may need it.
This would go into your functions.php file
that’s it. And remember, if you need to use this (or any shortcode) in a widget, you’ll need to enable it if your theme hasn’t already done so.
Willie Jackson
Very useful mate, nice work.
Dave Wilkinson
Awesome stuff. Thanks for showing me the error of my ways 🙂
Norcross
Just happy to pass it all along.
Phillip
I’m not sure I agree with the premise that some businesses *need* to have their email publicly displayed on their site, but regardless this is a good snippet 🙂
Norcross
Agreed. There are studies about how some folks won’t fill out a contact form, but will send an email if the address is there. But I’m not one of those studies people. I just build shit 🙂
Dion Evans
That is a great tool! I have been directing clients away from using e-mail addresses to contact form because of the potential for spam. Thanks for the work you did on this.
Norcross
I’m a big believer in having a contact form, since usually there is a need to collect specific information. But there’s definitely a place for using the email address straight-up.
Dino
Thanks for sharing. Super simple and works a treat. A virtual beer coming your way…
Chris
Great, simple tool… love it. I was wondering if there is a way to set it so it pre-fills the subject line?
Norcross
Yep, although I don’t think you can blend it with the obfuscating. There are numerous things you can add by adding to the link string. Here are some examples.
Chris
Thanks for the reply. That was what I was afraid of… I think I would rather have the obfuscating than the pre-fill.
Erin
Is this shortcode still current and functioning?
Norcross
Yep, sure does.
Diane Vickers
Love this! It’s sooo easy. Much better than tinkering with functions.php. Thank you.
Wojt
Great stuff! Thanks.