Forum OpenACS Development: Hiding E-Mail address in content from spiders

I am faced with the challenge that a client asked me to hide the E-Mail address in the CONTENT of XoWIKI news pages and other content generating packages.

A couple of questions on this:

a) Does OpenACS have a method to cloack an E-Mail address from spiders (e.g. like util::hide_email_from_spiders -email $email)
b) Which method would you recommend (e.g. contact form vs. Javascript)
c) If I were to use a contact form, would this be useful for others as well and should be put into a more generic place or is it fine if I just use the form in the mail-tracking package, which would have the benefit of tracking who has been sending an e-mail through the website (though I have to clarfiy I the client wants this information).

Thanks for your insights

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Posted by Richard Hamilton on
Malte,

I have seen a parameter in the recent OpenACS versions that offers to convert emails to display as an image file. Presumably any extra functionality could be added to whatever does that work.

Rather than mangle the email as it goes into the wiki, and rely on customised wiki forms, perhaps there would be a case for adding a 'hide email from spiders' parameter to the wiki application itself.

Another simple option might be to add some simple markup to enclose the email addresses to instruct the wiki to hide them. The issue with this is obvious in that it relies on the poster to add the markup.

R.