We all know it and we all hate it, and believe it or not we have all participated in it to some degree as internet noobs. There are several ways to deter spam on a blog. First is the use of plugins, I like Askimet WordPress. it works really well and used by most of the big name bloggers so that is good enough for me.

The second place to deter spam is with email. if you are a pro blogger you need to have your contact information out there. It is your internet business card and people need to access it. There are some nice forms that will do, but those are only a partial solution, because unless you are able to program it to accept attachments, links, etc it doesn’t have the functional range of email. Posting your email address openly though is a call for spammers, and while many companies like Yahoo and Google do a good job at filtering it for you others don’t. I have found the javascript code below however works very well and keeps bots from collection your email, yet displays it just like it would a normal link.

var name = “your_name”;

var domain = “your_name.com”;

document.write(’<a href=\”mailto:’ + name + ‘@’ + domain + ‘\”>’);

document.write(name + ‘@’ + domain + ‘</a>’);

// –></script>

I didn’t write the code but I have been using it for years and can tell you that it does work when it comes to bot harvesting. it doesn’t stop assholes from giving it out and listing it elsewhere but nothing does and you just have to live with that if you want to play this game.  Check the header and you will be able to see it in action.