| LED Digest 1741: Losing Filtered Email |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ February 4, 2004 Issue #1741 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== -- Losing Filtered Email [was: Brightmail] ==-- ~ Wanda Husick "...how do you know it is not blocking business mail?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Email Address Verification ==-- ~ David Chapman "The solution could be solved by a two-way defense." ~ Graham Brown "This post touches a nerve for me." --== Use of Sub-domains for Rankings ==-- ~ Wanda Husick "If I link one domain to another...will I run afoul?" --== Ad Blocking Software ==-- ~ Kurt T. Francis "...as annoyed as I get at pop-ups, I still have to admit they can have validity." --== Java [was: Ad Blockers] ==-- ~ Peter Warnock "We are only now beginning to see the full potential of Java executed." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Viewing Source Code Disabled? ==-- ~ Ann Richmond ~ Robert Marlbrough ======= NEW ====================================== From: Wanda Husick Subject: Losing Filtered Email [was: Brightmail] > Here in the UK, the ISP I'm signed up to (Demon) > finally... introduced the Brightmail spam filtering > service to all incoming emails to their subscribers. - John Arrowsmith, LED 1740 But how do you know it is not blocking business mail? I have customers who use the darn stupid subject line "Hi" instead of the topic they are questioning and, of course, friends do it too. A spam filter will make certain I do not get those emails. And any email I send to my customers is likely to be ruled "spam" even if they have requested an invoice or were looking for me to answer a question. I have a BIG problem with people not getting my response emails because of their spam filters. I receive over 400 spam emails a day (counting the ones that were returned emails to emails that spammers had co-opted my address as the return address). I just do not feel confident that filters will let through the mail that I need to run my business. Wanda Husick ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: David Chapman Subject: Email verification > Is there a method of verifying the email address on the fly...? - Andy Johnson, LED 1740 Hello Andy, The solution could be solved by a two-way defense. Although I wrote my solution in Perl, I believe the process could be coded the same in an ASP application. What I needed at the time was to allow visitors the ability to create their own contracts and brochures online. Thus, after filling in the required fields, the script would then compile the contract or brochure, log their info into a database and then send the personalized contents (PDF's, .jpg's, .gifs, MS Word, plain text documents, etc.) to the recipient via the email address supplied. While this method does not verify the email address BEFORE email is sent, it would make sure that a person has to enter their correct email address. To prevent spammers from using the form, I added a "time out" feature and the ability to block certain domains (hotmail, yahoo, aol, msn) and IP Addresses. If you would like to see how this form works for a different industry, visit www.indyevents.com and click on the "add your event" link. Hope this helps. David Chapman Indyevents.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Graham Brown Subject: Email verification Dear all, This post touches a nerve for me. I must be missing something. You went to all the trouble to get me to your site, interested enough in your product to seek more information, but you will only give it to me if I give you the information to add me to a spam list? What legitimate use is there for all the information that you are seeking at such an early stage of the customer relationship? How many potential customers just moved on and ignored the form and the product? What do your weblogs tell you? A few were sufficiently interested to actually spend time on your form to get information about your product. The inevitable effect of what you are seeking will be to make people even more reluctant to trust you with their information. I suspect that many of your sales come from those that gave you junk information - once they had evaluated what you had to offer.. Potential customers seem to be giving you a clear message that they do not trust you with their information. Why should they? I would not hesitate to fill in junk information in these circumstances or just move on. I would not give up personal information to get a brochure about a product in the world of bricks and mortar. What is so different about a web site? Do you really believe that this is the best way to sell your products? Downloading trial software may be viewed differently because you may want to get feedback and you have given something of use and this may justify asking for information in return. The easy solution is to have a key to the trial software itself or the downloads page. Email the key to activate or download as the case may be. It is highly likely that the only valid information that you will get will be the actual email address. In most cases it will be a "junk" email address. The webmail box used only for subscribing in places from where you expect to get future spam. Regards, Graham Brown ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Wanda Husick Subject: Sub-domain rankings > There are actually quite a few very legitimate reasons > why a webmaster may wish to use sub-domains: - Marty Milette, LED 1740 Hmm, I have recently been thinking of splitting my site into a second domain because it is sooo huge and the size of the site is obviously diluting the impact of any of my keywords. I sell antiques and vintage collectibles with an emphasis on dog collectibles - but you would not guess that looking at my index page because there is such a wide variety of categories. My thought had been to get a second domain name that was close to what I have now to put the dog collectibles on. Use the same business name, logo and page look for both sites. Continue to use my current index page for the existing site (including "dogs" as one of the categories of antiques but have that linked to the second site), then have a different index page on the dog site which would emphasize the dog collectibles. I really do not want to lose the advantage of having people who come looking for a vintage radio deciding to buy a pekinese figurine for their mother instead. I like having the connection between the categories (one reason I have not gone to a database powered site - too many people come looking for one thing and buy another) But, I do not want to run afoul of any of the rules of the Search engines. The point is to be found - not to get knocked out of the competition. Any opinions about the wisdom in following through with my plan? If I link one domain to another like they are part of the same website will I run afoul? Thanks. Wanda Husick www.decodog.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: K Francis Subject: Ad blockers Hi, LED'ers -- I've already jumped into this thread once, but with the great, contrasting posts Adam chose for LED # 1740, I couldn't resist coming in again. Ivan Jiminez makes some valid points we can consider, as surfers ourselves, and compare that to what we want relative to our own sites. He speaks well enough for himself, so there's no need for me to re-state what he already said. Becky Neilson also makes some valid, if different, points. Now I may be wrong in what I'm about to say, and if any of you correct me, I'll be glad to know. There are two things I *think* I understand, if dimly: (1.) Google puts a fair amount of weight on links out of and especially into a site; and, (2.) a computer expert I know (but who is not in the marketing side -- he's both a hardware and software specialist) told me well-chosen pop-ups can help my site's ranking in Google and other search engines. *If* I'm not wrong in those beliefs, as annoyed as I get at pop-ups, I still have to admit they can have validity. Speaking for myself as just one surfer, I will tolerate a reasonable number (say 3 or 4 in a multi-page, half-hour visit to a site), so long as they are directly related to the site's own content. But I absolutely do not want to be visiting, say, a site about astronomy and either be overwhelmed with dozens of pop-ups -- many of which one can't easily close -- or have any pop-ups not related to astronomy. That espcially goes for Viagra, make (whatever) bigger, fake date invites, and the like, or worse still, BOTH too many and not relevant. Not only do I kill those immediately, but I also promise myself never to visit the site that foisted them on me in the first place -- and in this I indirectly differ from Ivan: I don't care how well-written, well-organized, easily-navigable, and valuable a site is, if its owner is going to foist this garbage on me, it's bye-bye time. But if it's targeted -- in Ivan's site's case, if it offers related services and products to what his own site offers regarding targeting a set demographic audience -- fine. My own site focuses primarily on Bangkok, Thailand, and though I've chosen not to use pop-ups anymore, if I ever do use them again they are going to *have* to be related to at least Thailand in general and better still Bangkok in particular. Of course, all this is easy for me to say: my web site is a labor of love from which I've never made a cent. I have a fair number of outward links, and a few banners. And I don't mind, as web master. For people trying to make a living, I can see the concerns are different. Just a few more thoughts. And Adam, you continue to do the most excellent job you've always done. Thanks. Kurt T. Francis, Web Master http://BangkokAtoZ.com, Bangkok's Voice On The Web <Moderator Comment> Thanks Kurt, that kind of talk is always appreciated :-). In all seriousness, this job is made easier because of the quality of the subscribers. Believe me, I know -- I've worked on some bad lists! Best wishes, Adam ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Peter Warnock Subject: Java [was: Ad blockers] > So, Java can get mad, but we don't need it on the Internet. Others > can simply disagree or rather agree to disagree with me. - Lee Roberts, LED 1740 We are only now beginning to see the full potential of Java executed. Bugs can be associated with two issues: 1) learning curve of the programmers, and 2) Sun vs. Microsoft lawsuit and lack of support thereafter. When Sun won, Microsoft dropped support for the Virtual Machine. As new computers come loaded with the Sun version of Java rather than Microsoft's, we are seeing more advanced applications that utilize the technology. For example, the United States Postal Service can deliver a paid postage label to a user's printer through the browser without having to install additional software. No other platform is as compatible or secure across different operating environments. The FP Hover button in Frontpage, and most Frontpage features for that matter, should be avoided since they are resource intensive and biased toward Microsoft. There are several other products that provide the same or better user-friendliness while taking advantage of highly compatible open source technologies. Peter Warnock Webstruction, LLC ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Ann Richmond Subject: Viewing source > For some reason I can no longer view HTML > source code in either Outlook or Explorer. - Charles Hiatt, LED 1739 > This is usually due to your browser cache being full. - Bryan W. Shea, LED 1740 You are right about this fix on viewing source. Also takes care of the probem of the back button not working and you having to refresh the page. If you find the source of this problem on Google, this fix is listed by many people and they refer to it as a bug in MS Internet Explorer. Ann Richmond www.randrinc.com ann [at] randrinc [dot] com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Robert Marlbrough Subject: Viewing source Hi Charles, When I'm not doing Internet stuff, I do on-site computer consulting, and I've had to deal with this type of issue many times. When Internet Explorer shows you source code, it launches, by default, Notepad.exe. Something is either misconfigured or notepad.exe is missing or infected with a virus, etc. It could be a misconfigured registry entry. If you are using Windows XP or Windows ME, it does have the System Restore feature which can roll back the entire OS and registry to a previous date, which may or may not help, depending on if it's a registry problem or a file problem. If you're not running Windows XP yet, please upgrade, as it is so much more solid and stable than any other version of Windows I've used, including Windows 2000. The way I usually fix this type of problem is do a reinstall of the OS to the same folder, and it will erase / replace all the system files with copies off the CD, and it will keep your registry and software settings. You may have to reinstall all the hotfixes and security patches, but it should clear things up if it's a file issue. If that doesn't solve it, a fresh reinstall of the OS into a new folder will, for sure, as you'll have a clean registry and clean OS files. In most cases, it's not a bad way to clean out your PC anyway from all the stuff that has accumulated over the years. Just reinstall the software you now use on a regular basis, and your data files will still be on the hard drive. Then always follow the 3 basic rules: - Be sure to back up your PC to CD-R, so virii can't ever get to it. - Always keep your anti-virus software up-to-date on a daily basis. - Scan your PC using Ad-Aware to clean out spyware that will slow down or crash your PC. Thanks, Robert Marlbrough Web Wizards http://www.webwizards.net/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. 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