creating link for text in text box issue

**teb2500** · 01 February 2015, 05:42 PM

hi there - quick question for something that i thought should be easy...

i have a text box on a "contact us" page that lists address, phone etc. i prefer not listing my email address and would rather just have text that says "click here to send email" and then make those words a link to my email address. i thought the process was to highlight that text and select the link icon which brings up the link window where i filled in my email address. after clicking "ok" out of that window, saving the page and then previewing it, it seems all of the text in the box (including the phone numbers!) are a link to my email.

am i missing a step here or doing this completely wrong? i'm using wd 10 premium. thanks for any assistance!

**gwpriester** · 01 February 2015, 06:12 PM

When you highlight text and add an e-mail link, Xara scrambles the link to hide it from spammers and spambots.

When the visitor clicks the link it unscrambles the address and opens the visitor's e-mail client.

That said, I see the same thing that you are seeing.

My guess is this is not visible to a spambot but I will see if I can get someone at Xara (or any of the more savvy members) to provide a better explanation.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 February 2015, 07:15 PM

It works for me. Try the attached xar

Are you sure your just highlighting the "Click to email us text" & not ALL of the text?

**gwpriester** · 01 February 2015, 10:06 PM

Egg - It's not a matter of the e-mail address being scrambled in the HTML document, but that the hidden e-mail address appears on the status line of the browser. If the browser can see it and display it, then probably the spambots can see it as well.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 February 2015, 11:20 PM

Hi Gary, not my field of expertise but from the help file:

Technical note: Xara Designer Pro X10 encodes your email address to reduce the likelihood that SPAM robots will find your email address from the web page. This requires Javascript to be enabled in the browser (currently >95% of browsers).

I take it from this that the source file masks the email address from spiders/robots but at some time the destination address needs to be revealed. Nowhere can I see this was an issue with the OP's post, just that the email address contained all the address info not just the email address. Confused now :/

**gwpriester** · 02 February 2015, 12:20 AM

after clicking "ok" out of that window, saving the page and then previewing it, it seems all of the text in the box (including the phone numbers!) are a link to my email.

I disagree.

**Egg Bramhill** · 02 February 2015, 06:01 AM

If you look at the source file Gary you'll see the following, which persumably is what robots/spiders see:

**steve.ledger** · 02 February 2015, 07:51 AM

Originally Posted by teb2500

hi there - quick question for something that i thought should be easy...

i have a text box on a "contact us" page that lists address, phone etc. i prefer not listing my email address and would rather just have text that says "click here to send email" and then make those words a link to my email address. i thought the process was to highlight that text and select the link icon which brings up the link window where i filled in my email address. after clicking "ok" out of that window, saving the page and then previewing it, it seems all of the text in the box (including the phone numbers!) are a link to my email.

am i missing a step here or doing this completely wrong? i'm using wd 10 premium. thanks for any assistance!

I cannot repeat this in WD10 Premium.
Can you supply your .web file then we can see what you are seeing?

I'm not sure why Gary is bringing up the email encryption points as it seems totally unrelated to the OPs problem?

**teb2500** · 02 February 2015, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by steve.ledger

I cannot repeat this in WD10 Premium.
Can you supply your .web file then we can see what you are seeing?

I'm not sure why Gary is bringing up the email encryption points as it seems totally unrelated to the OPs problem?

Steve, Gary & Egg - thanks so much for all of your input. My original concern was just getting the link to work. I still have issues with this and decided on just doing a workaround with an icon as the link for the email address and a text box next to it stating to click on the icon to send email.

I used Egg's file and when I preview that it works just fine. (I am creating my website as a supersite if that makes any difference.) I even copied his text box into my web page and changed the data and I still have issues (no longer is the entire text box a link to my email, but the email link is not working on my web page when previewing - and I have used Chrome and Firefox for previews.) When I originally created the text box, I typed in all of the information and then highlighted the text with my mouse to create the email link. I clicked on the link button and filled in the link address and after closing, saving and previewing, I got the whole text box as a link. With Egg's file, I just changed the non-email information and clicked on the change link when the mouse was over his email link to change his address to mine. I saved and previewed and there was no link - just the text.

As I said, I did the workaround and I'm OK with moving forward. Not sure why this isn't working for me. Should there be any difference to seeing this link via a preview vs. ftp publishing? The site is not live as it's still under construction.

**teb2500** · 02 February 2015, 02:25 PM

click2email2.web

Originally Posted by steve.ledger

I cannot repeat this in WD10 Premium.
Can you supply your .web file then we can see what you are seeing?

I'm not sure why Gary is bringing up the email encryption points as it seems totally unrelated to the OPs problem?

I have attached my contact page (less most of the content) to Egg's click2email file. The link looks fine in the design page, but when I preview it, the link is not there (and I have again tried Firefox and Chrome).