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Q: for JoseLeon only ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
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Subject: for JoseLeon only
Category: Computers > Programming
Asked by: stevep234-ga
List Price: $25.00
Posted: 29 Oct 2003 13:28 PST
Expires: 28 Nov 2003 13:28 PST
Question ID: 270889
I am concerned about spam spider robots getting my email address.  So
you will notice throughout my web site I call my email address with:
<? 
include("email_add1.php"); 
?> 
I would like to use this or some version of this in my form processing
files.  When form4.php is sent, form4_proc.php is used.  In
form4_proc.php are the following lines:
// Build the messeage header
// $to       = "XXXX@merrymonk.com,/email_add1.php";
$to       = "XXXX@merrymonk.com,XXXXX@hotmail.com";
The second line does not work, so it is commeted out.  I would like to
use some version of the second line, rather than the third line, so my
email addresses continue to be hidden from the spam spiders.  I hope
it will be as simple as assigning the include("email_add1.php"); to a
variable and putting the variable on that line.  How would I do that?
It takes two attempts to test this function on this site as it was
written on another site, where it works ok on the first attempt.  So
be aware I will be copying the code you come up with here to that
other site.
If this job becomes very complex, let me know.
Thanks.
Steve

Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 29 Oct 2003 14:02 PST
Hello, stevep234:
  Ok, I understand what you want, but I think it's easier than that,
in fact, you can write your e-mail address as is, please, let me
explain.

A spam spider search readable files (html, txt, etc) looking for
e-mail addresses, but if you store your e-mail address in a .php file,
this file cannot be read by the spider. If the spider wants to read
it, it will be parsed by the webserver and, in the specific case of
form4_proc.php, this e-mail address is not echoed to the output, it's
just used in the mail function, so any spider can get it.

Maybe you want a different thing..., just let me know.

Regards.

Clarification of Question by stevep234-ga on 29 Oct 2003 17:00 PST
hi,
I'm not sure I understand the reasoning of the explanation, but the
conclusion "...used in the mail function, so any spider can get it."
is definitely what I don't want.  I want to make it so any spider can
Not get it.  It's ok if people see it but not a spider.  What can I do
so spiders can't get it, but people can?
Thanks.
Steve

Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 30 Oct 2003 00:08 PST
Hello, stevep234:
  Sorry, I'm spanish and negative phrases are a bit different...

"it's just used in the mail function, so NO spider can get it."

The reasoning is the following:
-When you request a file from your server, this file is processed by
your webserver, for example, apache
-If the file is, for example, and HTML file, apache reads the file and
dumps it's contents to the browser
-But if the file is a PHP one, apache *parses* the file and dumps the
*results* to the browser

What does it mean? If in a PHP file you don't use "print", "echo" or
something similar to dump your e-mail address, then, your e-mail
address it's not available to the spiders.

Regards.

Clarification of Question by stevep234-ga on 30 Oct 2003 02:00 PST
hi JoseLeon,

Before I close the question, I'd like to clarify with an example.  On
my web site is a "form6_proc.php" file.  It has my email address twice
in that file.  Download it and do a search for "staff" and you will
find my email address twice there.  (1) Are you saying that a spider
can't find my address in that file?

My web site has been spidered by google (and I never submitted it) and
when I click on the "Cached" version in google, and I do a view
source, it appears to me that the google spider can read all the php
files that make up the home page with no problem.  To me it looks like
the only thing google was not able to read was my email in a graphic
and my email broken up with javascript.  Search for "mike rowe
battery" in google and you will find my site.  Click on "cached" and
you will see googles cached version of my home page with all the php
files that make it complete.  (2) If google can spider my php files,
why can't other spam spiders do the same thing?

Here's the url of a google search for my web site, but I'm not sure
its still good or if it changes as google changes.
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=mike+rowe+battery&btnG=Google+Search

(3) Do you know of a free or cheap tool that will tell me the location
of my web site in google, depending which search words I use?

I think once I better understand how google accessed my php files,
then I will feel better about other spiders not seeing my email
address.

Thanks.
Steve

Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 30 Oct 2003 03:56 PST
Hello, stevep234:

That's exactly the point that I'm trying to explain you:

If you download the file:

http://www.thebatteryshoppe.com/form6_proc.php

You are not downloading the "contents" of that file to your browser,
you are downloading the "output" of the "execution" of that script to
your browser.

Forget google for now, check out this sample:

http://www.xpde.com/test.php

If you browse to that address, you see on your browser:

mail@domain.com

And if you see the source code in your browser, you see:

mail@domain.com

But look now the source code of the PHP script:

<?php

  $mailaddress1="mail@domain.com";
  $mailaddress2="yourmail@yourdomain.com";

  echo $mailaddress1;

  $mailaddress2.=" this mail is hidden!!";

?>

As you can see, the only e-mail address you can see from "outside" the
server, is the first one, while the second one it's hidden, because
there is no command that outputs the mail to the client's browser.

In conclusion, an spider can only see the same you can see using a
browser, but with the exception that (most) spiders don't execute
javascript, so if you use javascript to write your address on the
browser, your address is also hidden.

In returning to your original question, in form4_proc.php, the mail
address is not sent to the output in any place, so it's hidden.

Why you can see your e-mail address cached in google? Because google
caches the contents of the page, in the same way a spider does, but
when these contents are shown to you on your browser "the javascript
is executed, writting your e-mail address there".

I know this is a bit hard to understand, but you have to think "when",
"where" and "how" your e-mail address is shown on the browser.

Regards.

Clarification of Question by stevep234-ga on 30 Oct 2003 16:12 PST
hi JoseLeon,

I think I understand, but I will need to reread your answer a few more
times.  You can post the answer so I can close the question and pay
you now, but after I think about it I may ask for more clarification,
ok?

Also do you know of any tool that lists the rank of a web site in
google by keywords?
My site is working very well now, but I'm curious which files you
changed to prevent all the pop-ups in NS7.1?  (These last two
questions belong more with previous answered questions, but I think
its better to put them together rather than jump from page to page,
you agree?)

Thank you again and after I finish some code modifications, I will be
posting another question for you in about a week.

Thanks.

Steve
Answer  
Subject: Re: for JoseLeon only
Answered By: joseleon-ga on 31 Oct 2003 07:17 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hello, stevep234:
  Ok, I will use this answer to explain you another time, in a
different way, how all this works, so you will have different point of
views.
  
Let's take this html file:

<html>
mail@domain.com
</html>  

This file is stored on your server, in your root dir, let's name it,
for example, test.htm. Ok, everything it's clear. What happens when
someone types on his/her browser this address?:

http://www.yourdomain.com/test.htm

There is a software on your server (i know you know that, but let me
explain it to get the full picture) that detects "someone" want's to
get the file test.htm stored on your server. This software it's called
web server, and (very roughly) looks the extension of the file, in
this case .htm, and if it's a file that doesn't need any special
processing, dumps it's contents "as-is" to the output, so the user's
browser can get it.

Because of this, if there is a mail address stored in an .htm file,
anyone can read it, including spam spiders, because they have access
to that file "as-is".

Ok, but what happen to .php files? .php files contain programming
instructions to perform operations, so let's look again the process
when a user request a .php file.

Let's take this .php file

<?php

  echo "this is a test";

?>

The file it's named test.php on your server, and when you request it
using this URL in your browser:

http://www.yourdomain.com/test.php

The webserver "knows" that a .php file must be "interpreted", must be
"executed", it must NOT dump its contents "as-is" to the user's
browser, so if you request this .php file, you get in your browser
this:

this is a test

NOT THIS:

<?php

  echo "this is a test";

?>

Which is the .php source code. Why? Because the .php script tells the
webserver to dump the string "this is a test", nothing more. That's
why if you use an e-mail address in a .php file, an spam spider cannot
get it if you don't "echo" or "print" that e-mail address to the
output. In a few words, the user's browser (or any spider, or google)
can only see what you "dump" to the output.

But why cannot an spider read my e-mail address in an .htm file if I
use javascript? Well, before explain this, please, understand the
previous paragraphs, because this is going to be a little bit harder.

When you request an .htm file, it can contain text, tags and
javascript. What is javascript? It's a programming language "executed
by the client's browser", because of that, when you browse to a page,
the browser downloads that .htm page, and "then", "only then" executes
the javascript code inside. This can only be done by a browser of by a
powerful spam spider that uses some kind of javascript engine, but
it's not the most common tool.

Of course, you can request as many clarifications you need until you
understand it.

Regarding Google, you will find a lot of useful information here:

://www.google.es/webmasters/

And regarding the ranking checking software you ask, be aware that
automated "ranking checking" programs violate Google's terms of
service. Please, check this page:

://www.google.es/webmasters/facts.html

In any case, here it's a software that might interest you:

Agent Web Ranking
http://www.aadsoft.com/

Regarding the changes made on the Javascript to make things work on
NS, I added a parameter to the subBox function, called visible and
also these lines:

if (!visible)
{
	v.style.display='none';
}

So I could make invisible the subbox created, so changing the visible
parameter for the _s and _b part of the popup did the trick:

var shadow=new subBox(x+8,y+8,tw,th,shadowcolor,cid+'_s',false);
var outerdiv=new subBox(x,y,w,h,bordercolor,cid+'_b',false);

Regarding your next question, just tell you that I'm going to be in
vacation from 8/11-15/11, if your question it's not going to be long,
I will solve it from 1/11 until 7/11, but if it's going to take longer
and you cannot wait, you can request another reseacher, in any case,
thank you very much for request my services again, that's very kind of
you.

Best regards.

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 31 Oct 2003 12:59 PST
Thank you JoseLeon, you do great work.  My next question won't be
ready for a few days, so I will wait until you are back from vacation.
 But I might ask for more clarifications on something before you go,
so be sure to check.
Have fun on your vacation.
Steve

Clarification of Answer by joseleon-ga on 03 Nov 2003 01:31 PST
Hello, stevep234:
  Thanks for the rating and the tip, I will check out frequently, I'm
not going to answer any question until I return, so any person get's a
delayed answer.

Regards.

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 02 Feb 2004 02:50 PST
Hi JoseLeon,

Are you still in this forum?  And are you automatically notified when
I post here?  I have another project, but I'm not sure you do this
type of programming.  Are you at all familiar with oscommerce, an open
source shopping cart system?  Someone started to install it on my
site, but now, 3 weeks later, I doubt he really knows what he's doing,
or he is too lazy to modify it to work properly with my web site. 
Look at oscommerce and let me know.

Thank you.

Steve

Clarification of Answer by joseleon-ga on 02 Feb 2004 03:46 PST
Hello, stevep234:
  Yes, I'm very familiar with oscommerce, I have done several projects
in the past (not here) about theme design, in depth modifications and
development of payment modules.

You can post your project here and I will request for advice to Google
Editors to check if they allow such kind of work here.

Thanks a lot to think in me again ;-)

Regards.

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 02 Feb 2004 09:31 PST
Hi JoseLeon,

I just got an email from the other programmer promising he will be
finished by the end of this week, so I guess I'll just wait another
few days before I contact you again.

Thank you.

Steve

Clarification of Answer by joseleon-ga on 02 Feb 2004 11:04 PST
Hello, stevep234:
  No problem, you can find me here when you need me ;-)

Regards.

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 20 May 2004 00:37 PDT
hi JoseLeon

It's been a long time.  Do you still do work at this forum, or would
you prefer I post it elsewhere?

Thanks.

Steve

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 20 May 2004 00:40 PDT
JoseLeon,
Are you very busy now, or can you take on a series of php scripting assignments?

Please let me know how your schedule is presently.

Thank you.

Steve
www.thebatteryshoppe.com

Clarification of Answer by joseleon-ga on 20 May 2004 01:38 PDT
Hello, stevep234:
  Nice to see you again here, yes, you can post any task here and I
will try to do it asap.

Regards.

Request for Answer Clarification by stevep234-ga on 31 May 2004 20:27 PDT
hi JoseLeon,

I posted another new php programming question for you here at google answers.

Thanks.

Steve
www.thebatteryshoppe.com

Clarification of Answer by joseleon-ga on 09 Jun 2004 08:35 PDT
Hello, stevep:
  This is just to remove the needing for a clarification on my researcher center.

Regards.
stevep234-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars and gave an additional tip of: $5.00
Excellent, complete answer, top rate work

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