at mangle / e-mail question

[Ibis]

Greetings!

*

Thank you for your script; it's going to make my life so much easier! I don't know much about PHP (and only have *a bit of experience with other scripts), so I hope you'll be patient with my questions after all the work you've done to document within the script itself.

I'm just in the process of modifying it to suit the form I constructed, and I've read over a couple of times the portion where you're talking about the three sections:

EMAIL_NAME**** TARGET_EMAIL**** AT_MANGLE

Am I correct in my interpretation that I leave

define("EMAIL_NAME","^[a-z0-9.]+");

alone, change

$TARGET_EMAIL = array(EMAIL_NAME."@yourhost\.com$");

so that it reads something like

$TARGET_EMAIL = array(^janedoe@domainname\.com$");

(i.e. leaving the @ symbol as is), and then set

define("AT_MANGLE","");

so that it's something like

define("AT_MANGLE","_at_");

but more creative than that.

If this is all correct, what is the difference between target e-mail and recipients? Will they be the same? Will the spambots not be able to read the target e-mail above as an email address?

I'm pretty confused. I'm sure this won't be my last question in trying to configure the script....

*

Thanks,

Ibis

[russellr]

Hi,

I'm pretty confused.

No, your question is very sensible.

Your $TARGET_EMAIL value should be a real email pattern - what you've got is right.

The $AT_MANGLE is processed before the email address is checked with $TARGET_EMAIL.*

So,*leave the "@" in*$TARGET_EMAIL and make your $AT_MANGLE whatever you want.

In "recipients" in the form, use your $AT_MANGLE value, like this:

recipients="janedoe_at_somesite.com"

This is what protects your email address from spambots.

We always recommend working in steps:

1. Just set $TARGET_EMAIL and get your form work with that[/*]
2. Now set $AT_MANGLE and confirm it still works[/*]
3. Now change recipients in your form to use $AT_MANGLE and confirm it still works.[/*]
4. etc.

[/*]
*

[Ibis]

OK,

got that so far, but I have another question already:

The address at

define("DEF_ALERT","");

(and I suppose any other addresses I come across except for "recipients") should not be mangled, correct?

As for testing as I go, I don't yet have access to the server, so I'm flying blindly for the moment - which is ok for now since I have so much*left to do.*I'm going through and changing what I need to change as I come to it.

I also have to figure out how to handle the "realname" since my form has a seperate field for last and first* - I suppose it will work if I just label the last name field*realname instead and when I plug the csv into a database just put that value in a field called last name there....

[russellr]

Hi,

The address at define("DEF_ALERT",""); (and I suppose any other addresses I come across except for "recipients") should not be mangled, correct?

Any address you set in formmail.php (such as DEF_ALERT) cannot be seen by spambots, so you can (and should) use the real address.

Conversely, any address you put in your form can been seen by spambots, so you should use the mangling.

I also have to figure out how to handle the "realname" since my form has a seperate field for last and first - I suppose it will work if I just label the last name field realname instead and when I plug the csv into a database just put that value in a field called last name there....

Yes, that's an option.* You could also use JavaScript to amalgamate the two names into a "realname" field, but that's harder to do (and won't work on browsers that have JavaScript disabled).

*