A Quarter of a Century
The very first issue of Possibilities (known as "Willmaster Possibilities" at that time) was published on July 27, 1999. It has been published every week since.
This issue marks the 25th anniversary.
This is issue #1304. There were 1,304 weeks in those 25 years. 7 of them were leap years.
If you are interested, here are the calcuations to determine the number of weeks between two dates (using "52 weeks per year" doesn't work for anything more than 3 years).
365 × 25 years = 9125 days. Plus 7 leap year days = 9132. 9132 ÷ 7 = integer 1304 weeks. Weekly 25 years = issue # 1304.
The "How Many Weeks Between Dates?" demo can be used for determining the number of weeks between 2 dates. For verifying the above calculation, the start date is July 27, 1999 and the the 25th anniversary is July 27, 2024.
To celebrate, or to cuddle up to nostalgia, the very first issue of this newsletter is reproduced further below.
The only URL in that first issue that has survived 25 years is http://willmaster.com/possibilities/. The other URLs, every email address, and the postal address are all invalid today. Several names have been altered to protect the folks from learning, suddenly, that 25 years later their name is published again. Placeholders between double square brackets are for the emailing software to insert personalization.
Enjoy the nostalgic feeling. (Tap here for easier reading. Phones will display better in landscape position.)
NOTES:
Your personal subscription information with removal
instructions is below this newsletter.
If you wish to forward this newsletter to friends and/or
associates, please forward the entire newsletter.
You may, however, delete your subscription information.
BEGIN NEWSLETTER:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
W i l l M a s t e r P o s s i b i l i t i e s
Nice site! What does it do?
July 27, 1999 Issue # 1
William Bontrager, Publisher -- possibilities@willmaster.com
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/
Copyright (c) 1999 by William Bontrager.All rights reserved.
============================================================
[[name]], this is a personalized publication.
If your name is incorrect, please send an email to
mailto:name-possibilities@willmaster.com and specify the
spelling and capitalization of the name you prefer for
your personalized copy of WillMaster Possibilities.
Your name is also key to extending our anti-spam
protection to you when you contribute copy to WillMaster
Possibilities. Our technology allows us to use one common
email address in conjunction with a unique code which
forwards your personal email to your real address. See
"How to use the anti-spam features".
==============================
Contents:
~-~ Prelude
~-~ Possibility: Spam Proofing Your Websites
~-~ Q&A
~-~ Forum: E-zine Personalization
~-~ Guiding Quote of the Week
~-~ Subscribers Talk Back
~-~ How to use the anti-spam features
~-~ Newsletter addresses and URLs
Articles in the works for future issues:
Determining Your Visitor's Time Zone.
Letting Visitors Recommend Your Website.
Letting Visitors Email a Web Page To Themselves.
Providing a Printer-Friendly Web Page for Visitors.
Special issue, "How To Hire a CGI Programmer", coming soon.
==============================
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==============================
~-~ Prelude
Hello [[name]],
What is your reaction to personalized newsletters? The
"Forum: E-zine Personalization" section, below, addresses
that question. Please voice your opinion; state your
feelings about it. Thank you.
Welcome to the premier issue of "WillMaster Possibilities".
Many internet professionals are so busy with other aspects
of their sites -- design, marketing, copy writing -- there
is little time left to pursue the technical details which
make websites more than static presentations.
The focus of WillMaster Possibilities is to present things
your website can *do*, primarily by using established,
proven technology. Some issues may speculate about emerging
methods or internet-related inventions. Mostly, though, you
will find useful techniques which allow your websites to
interact with your visitors.
This premier issue uses the most familiar CGI application
on the internet and gives it an additional purpose.
William Bontrager
Publisher
==============================
~-~ Possibility:
Spam Proofing Your Websites
Visitor feedback forms have been around ever since browsers
have supported CGI.
They're on most professional sites. Certainly they are on
those sites which best project friendly customer service.
Today, we'll use the feedback form to help spam proof your
sites.
Spammer's email harvesting robots scan your site for email
addresses. Then the addresses become part of spammers'
mailing lists.
Here is a practical way to remove all email addresses from
your site. And whether or not your sites have access to
their own CGI.
(Spammers collect email addresses from other sources, too.
Spam proofing sites removes only one source.)
[[name]], I'm on a mission.
I don't like spammers harvesting email addresses from
our sites. Uninvited, demanding our time and stealing
our resources to sate their greed by pushing their
impatience-soaked ideas into our faces. And I don't
like them doing it to our friends.
So, I decided to do something about it.
The result is MasterFeedback, a visitor feedback form and
Perl CGI script. The form contains no email addresses in
the HTML code or on the page, not even in a hidden form
field.
The script is freely available for download, along with
a generic HTML form you can modify. This free version is
for Unix servers. (Find download URL further below.)
There is also a version for:
~ folks who don't have CGI for their sites.
~ web sites on NT or other non-Unix operating systems.
~ folks who don't want to mess with scripts but still
want the benefits.
This second version requires sign-up and a monthly fee.
While I was making MasterFeedback, Mari Bontrager made
graphical buttons with our email addresses as images.
These will be our links to the feedback forms.
[[name]], spam proofing your sites
is a simple two-step process:
(1) Obtain a feedback form.
(2) Eliminate all email addresses and replace them with
links to your feedback forms.
That's it!
STEP: (1) Obtain a feedback form.
This means you either acquire and install a script for
that purpose, or you use a script hosted on someone else's
server.
MasterFeedback is robust and does the job quite well. But
it's not the only tool around.
~~ If you have CGI:
MasterFeedback (free) (Unix) is available for download at:
http://willmaster.com/MasterFeedback/
There are dozens of free and shareware feedback scripts.
They're available for all popular operating systems --
Unix, NT, Linux. Some CGI download sites are listed in the
"Links and Resources" section of:
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/examples.html
Whichever script you decide to use, please make sure it
does not require your email address anywhere within your
web page, not even in hidden form fields.
~~ If you do not have CGI (or just don't want to be
bothered with it):
Remote hosted CGI is your solution. This means the forms
are on your server (on your web site), but the script is
on someone else's server.
Remote hosted MasterFeedback is designed so your visitors
never need to leave your site. They stay with you, even
when they click the submit button. The service is only
$2 per month. Sign up for your 14-day free trial at
http://willmaster.com/c/
STEP: (2) Eliminate all email addresses and replace them
with links to your feedback forms.
(For illustration purposes, let's suppose your feedback
form is at "http://www.domain.com/feedback.html" and that
your email address is "name@domain.com".)
Replace all occurrences of:
<a href="mailto:name@domain.com">Write Me!</a>
with:
<a href="http://www.domain.com/feedback.html">Write Me!</a>
If you want a graphic link, just replace "Write Me!" (or
other link text) with your graphic's "<IMG ..." tag.
A simple graphic with your email address as the image can
present your address visually and yet not have the text
anywhere in your source code. Spammers are not yet
sophisticated enough to make graphic image reading robots.
(Note to users of AOL and HTML email readers: The above
contains HTML code examples. If your reader shows them
as links (or doesn't show them at all), you may need to
view the source code in order to reveal the HTML code in
its entirety.)
One more note: To spam proof your sites, no text with an
email address can be in your page source code, anywhere.
Not in image "alt" tags, no in META tags, not in html
comment areas, nowhere. You may wish to use your word
processor or page editor's search function to ensure no
stray "@" characters with email addresses remain on your
pages.
That's all there is to it, [[name]].
Happy spammer swatting!
William Bontrager, Programmer and Publisher
"Screaming Hot CGI" programs
"WillMaster Possibilities" e-Newsletter
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/
mailto:relay@willmaster.com?Subject=|William|
Copyright (c) 1999 by William Bontrager
Permission is granted to reprint the above article in its
entirety provided no changes are made to the article and
the author's name, signature lines, and copyright line are
printed with the article;
except
~ you may remove the personalizations, and
~ you may change the article's title.
To obtain a reprintable copy of this article with the
personalizations already removed for you, visit:
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/archives/
==============================
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No more missed calls while you are on-line.
Fast download! 30-day FREE TRIAL
Pagoo Communications, Inc.
Free Download: http://willmaster.com/a/pagoo.pl
==============================
~-~ Q&A
(The procedure for submitting questions is below.)
This premier issue has only one question.
Debbie Author of Debbie Author Creations, publisher of
the "AC Designer" and maintainer of a wonderful ezine
directory, asks:
Is there a universal way to protect scripts from
hackers? I was "horrified" to find out that hackers
can access passwords etc. through the script.
Is there a line of code that I can put in each script
to alleviate this problem (besides @referrer)?
Debbie Author
Debbie Author Creations
http://www.debbieauthorcreations.com
mailto:relay@willmaster.com?Subject=|Deborah|
(The "@referrer" Ms. Author refers to is a technique which
limits use of a CGI program to forms at specific URLs.)
Yes, there are things you can do. But there really is no
cure-all; even the United States Pentagon computers are
known to have been cracked into.
(1)
Prevent browsers from getting directory listings.
Put an index page into your vulnerable directories. The
index page could bounce (redirect) the person to your
home page or other URL. You will find a ready-made, quite
speedy, bouncer template in the "Other References" section
of http://willmaster.com/possibilities/examples.html Just
replace the example URLs with your own and upload it to
your server.
(2)
If you have access to it, employ your server's security
features. Unix with Apache can restrict CGI programs and
scripts to specific methods of data acquisition. NT and
Linux may have similar features.
See the "Other References" section of
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/examples.html for a
few technical details, of various skill levels, for
modifying CGI programs and scripts so they will function
within restricted data acquisition methods.
The referenced page also talks about work-arounds which
allow a script to trap and either reject or modify
hazardous characters related to shell commands and
server side includes.
(3)
http://www.mcp.com/ has many on-line books which you can
"check out" for free. Some of their books are about server
security. Once there, click on "Personal Bookshelf".
----- ----- -----
Wondering about something?
Got a burning question?
Now is the time to ask!
Pick the programmer's brains.
Questions about websites, what is possible to do with them,
and how to interact with your visitors.
To submit items for the "Q&A" section:
mailto:QandA-possibilities@willmaster.com
All contributors to Q&A are protected by Master Anti-Spam
Technology (MAST).
==============================
~-~ Forum:
E-zine Personalization
You have seen several instances of personalization in this
newsletter.
Like it? Don't like it?
Too much? Not enough?
Pleasant? Too familiar?
Now that you've had a chance to consult your feelings about
this, please write and let me know. If you do not wish to
participate in this public forum, you may write to me
privately at mailto:relay@willmaster.com?Subject=|William|
As a publisher, I like the idea of personalizing WillMaster
Possibilities for my subscribers. It lets me feel as if I'm
letting you know, at least in part, how much you are
appreciated.
As a programmer, I like the challenge of writing the code.
WillMaster Possibilities is mailed to you by a list server
being built for that purpose. It will evolve as different
needs and preferences come to light.
As a subscriber to a goodly number of ezines and discussion
lists, I receive a few publications which are personalized
in a limited manner. The first personalized mass publication
I received, I felt somewhat offended. "How dare they," I
though, "pretend to know me personally. I know I'm just a
name on a list. They can't fool me!"
I wear many hats. And sometimes the impetus of one hinders
another. Your views, as a subscriber, will be closely
considered and taken into account when deciding the future
course of WillMaster Possibilities and the software which
delivers it.
To participate in this Forum, send your contribution to:
mailto:forum-possibilities@willmaster.com?Subject=|P-eZines|
Ensure the "Subject:" contains the Forum Topic.
All participants in this forum are protected by Master
Anti-Spam Technology (MAST).
==============================
~-~ Guiding Quote of the Week
Our next door neighbor, regarding learning new tasks on her
computer:
"If it takes more than two clicks, I can do without."
[Anne Brown]
mailto:relay@willmaster.com?Subject=|AnneBrown|
Question: Would Anne Brown successfully navigate your site?
==============================
~-~ Subscribers Talk Back
Share your views. This is where ideas and opinions are
the coin of the realm.
Got a special joy or an injustice you want to air?
Continuing discussions will have their own Forum Topic.
To submit items for "Subscribers Talk Back":
mailto:talk-possibilities@willmaster.com
(Your email may begin a new Forum Topic)
All contributors to "Talk Back" are protected by Master
Anti-Spam Technology (MAST).
==============================
~-~ Newsletter addresses and URLs
Sending your emails to the applicable address will
facilitate responding to your communication. Thank you.
To subscribe, send a blank email to:
mailto:subscribe-possibilities@willmaster.com
To unsubscribe, send a blank email to:
mailto:unsubscribe-possibilities@willmaster.com
"Q&A" submission:
mailto:QandA-possibilities@willmaster.com
"Subscribers Talk Back" submission:
mailto:talk-possibilities@willmaster.com
(Your email may begin a new Forum Topic)
"Forum" submission (type the Forum Topic as the subject of
your email):
mailto:forum-possibilities@willmaster.com
Other newsletter related email:
mailto:possibilities@willmaster.com
Online issues (and reprints for your publication):
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/archives/
Personal email to William Bontrager:
mailto:relay@willmaster.com?Subject=|William|
William Bontrager, Publisher
Rural Route 1
Box 271-B
Solsberry, IN 47459
USA
mailto:possibilities@willmaster.com
http://willmaster.com/possibilities/
Copyright (c) 1999 by William Bontrager.All rights reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
:END NEWSLETTER
Your personal subscription information:
name: [[name]]
Email: [[email]]
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To remove your information, send a blank email to:
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I hope you experienced a smile while scanning through that issue.
As you know after reading through the first Possibilities issue, for decades I have had my attention on preventing spam.
Virtually all forms we offer to the public have spam-prevention considerations.
My Spam-free Form is a relatively easy web-page form to implement. Give it a try. Probably the form uses the most effective anti-spam method on the internet (no form tags). The form has been used on websites for over 5 years. I am aware of no automated spam report in all that time.
(This content first appeared in Possibilities newsletter.)
Will Bontrager
