Rotary 7040 Webmaster

NOTE: As an object lesson, the webmaster address for my old Rotary domain was subjected to a flood of crude solicitations before I implemented this technique. With spam levels increasing dramatically year over year, using a script such as the one below to protect your email addresses has gone from nice to necessary. Take the time to learn to use the scripts below.

SPAM is a term for unsolicited commercial email messages. Commercial spam is big business, and its purveyors use automated software called spambots to trawl websites, newsgroups and chat rooms looking for fresh email addresses to add to their lists. Savvy emailers know to limit spam in their inboxes by never giving their email address in newsgroups or chatrooms and using a throwaway address from services like yahoo.com when they need to provide an email address in an unfamiliar environment.

But how can you prevent email addresses being harvested from your website? If you are willing to learn a little JavaScript, it’s easily accomplished.

The technique shown in Sample 1 below has kept my club website almost entirely spam-free for several years.

(The colours in the samples below are purely for clarity on this page, they will be different in whatever editor you use for your pages. The red text shows how the email address fits into the code.)

A normal email address link coded in a page looks like the following (on one line):
<A HREF=”mailto:president@rotary.ca“>president@rotary.ca</A>

Sample 1

That code will appear on the web page as president@rotary.ca. You can see that the email address appears in two different places in the code and once on the rendered page, making it quite easy for a spambot to pick it up.

The trick I’m going to offer you here is a JavaScript technique that will make it difficult or impossible for the spambot to recognise the pattern of an email address in your webpage.

Sample 2 shows the same entry set up with JavaScript to obscure the address from spambots. The last six lines are the JavaScript code. the lines starting with “document” and “+” would usually appear on the same line, it’s just compressed here to fit the display.

Note also that the address as it will be displayed in the page will have a space between each character. This is easy enough to read, but obscures the address from spambots.

<script language=”javascript”>
<!–
document.write(”<a href=” + “mailto:president”
+ “@rotary.ca” + “>” + “president @ rotary.ca” + “</a>”)
//–>
</script>
Sample 2

Notice how the email addresses are broken up in sample 2.

If you place the text in sample 2 above in the HTML code of your web page or newsletter entry, replacing the black and red text with the appropriate information, this will work for you.

Quick and Simple

A really quick and simple way to accomplish this is to put “name -at- domain.com” instead of “name@domain.com” in your page.  Visitors will understand that they need to adjust the address and spammers may not pick up on it.

The responsibilities of the Club Secretary have expanded over the years as the Internet has played an increasing role in club activities.  In light of this, many District 7040 clubs may find it more practical to create the role of eSecretary to allow the duties to be divided.

While this is not a formally designated position, we encourage clubs to consider this to share the dutieswhere appropriate.  This might be a great position to draw in a newer member.  In many clubs this role might naturally fall to the webmaster.

Here is a suggested list of duties that might be carried out by a club eSecretary; each club will have a different set of requirements;

• Maintaining a club website (unless the club has a separate designated webmaster.)
• Maintaining club records on the District 7040 website;
  • Add and remove new and past members from the roster.
  • Maintain listings of club events for publication on the District Website.
  • Maintain the club profile on the district website.
  • Maintain attendance records on the district website when that feature is activated.
• Maintain club records on the RI website
• Assist club members to register on the district website
• Update members periodically on the features available on the District Website, particularly those available only to logged in members;
  • Club Roster
  • Electronic Post Office
  • District Directory
• Maintaining a Club Blog or newsletter online.
• Maintaining a club calendar online through Google Calendar.
• Ensuring that new members are aware of the resources available to Rotarians online, especially the club rosters and electronic post office available on the District 7040 Website.

Thanks to Bonnie Black of RC Plattsburgh for inspiring this list with hers.

Google Calendars are a great way to organize your club’s activities.  They allow you to give serveral people editing rights, and the calendar itself can be public or available only to your members.

Once you’ve set up your calendar, you can embed it right into your website!

To add a calendar to your site, carry out the following steps:

• Go to Google Calendar and view your club calendar.
• Click Settings in the top right corner
• Click the Calendars tab under Calendar Settings
• Click the calendar you wish to embed
• On the Calendar Details tab, you’ll see a section titled “Embed this Calendar”.
• Click the “Customise the colour, size and other options” link in that section
• Set up the customization options, then copy the code shown into the page you wish the calendar to appear in.