Friday, April 23

How to do a 'mail to' link

Photobucket
The other day, someone asked me how to do what is called a 'Mail To' link.
For example: Email me here or email lauren.glossary@gmail.com

When you click the bits in pink, your email program will automatically launch a new email with my email address in the 'To' box. Nifty, huh?

'Mail To' links are great because they save your readers time having to search for your email addy and then having to copy and paste it into a new email. Also, if you want to make it easy for people to email you but you'd rather not publish your full email address, the 'email here' option is a great solution.

If you also want to know how to create a 'Mail To' link, I'll tell ya!
 (I'm not familiar with Wordpress so I'll tell you what I do using Blogger.)

STEP 1
For blog posts: Use EDIT HTML mode
For side bar: Use an HTML/Javascript gadget

STEP 2
Insert this code:

<a href="mailto:youremailaddress">here</a>

You can replace 'here' with your actual email address if you prefer.

It's as easy as that! You may not want to give readers the option of contacting you by email but if privacy is a concern, you can always create a separate email account just for your blog. Personally, I'm grateful when blogs have an easy to find email option because comment forms can be buggy on occasion and sometimes I prefer to ask a question privately. Of course, it's up to you to do whatever works for you!

If there's anything else you'd like to ask me about how I did something on this blog, please feel free to fire away in a comment! I'm no code cruncher but I'll do my best to lend a hand.

4 comments:

Anthea said...

Hey Lauren, you might wanna be careful when using these. Spambots usually search for mailto links and send you unwanted emails!

If you've got a handy spam filter then it should be fine though.

Lauren Setterberg said...

Hi Anthea, thanks for popping in! I've heard that about spambots but so far, I haven't received much but I do have some pretty hardcore filters activated:)

Anthea said...

Always a pleasure popping in. I just love your blog.

Yours is definitely my fave South African blog. Keep it up.

Nadia Jonker said...

Thanks for this - have been wanting to use it for ages and did so today on a new page. I think it all works fine. Please take a look when you get a mo. Thanks hun. x