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I'm writing a WP Theme where registered users can email post authors sending them en email from the post's page itself.

So I created a contact form in which I get the user and author infos and emails and I put them in hidden input fields to pass them to the php mail function.

Does WordPress have a way to obfuscate the post author's email address, to protect it from scrapers? Is there a better way to implement this functionality, other than outputting the author email address in the form field?


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I suggest you take a look into the very easy to use wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7 instead of reinventing the wheel, although I don't know what you're really aiming for without looking at it. Perhaps you can provide a link? –  soulseekah Oct 18 '11 at 12:40
As-written, this really isn't a WordPress -related question. –  Chip Bennett Oct 18 '11 at 12:44
@Chip Bennet As there's a template tag/core function for that, it's imo valid and wp related. –  kaiser Oct 18 '11 at 14:21
@kaiser as-written, this question asks about HTML form fields, putting email addresses into hidden form fields, and using the PHP mail function. It could be written in a way that is WordPress related, but it isn't currently. –  Chip Bennett Oct 18 '11 at 14:30
I've attempted a re-write, to make the question more WordPress-specific. –  Chip Bennett Oct 18 '11 at 14:44

2 Answers 2

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Core function to obfuscate mail addresses:

antispambot( $emailaddy, $mailto );

Second arg is 0 or 1 and optional.

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Oh! Is this what the OP was asking? Okay, let me attempt an edit to the question to make it more clear. –  Chip Bennett Oct 18 '11 at 14:40
I guess so. I already deleted my answer containing info about the wp_mail() function as I missunderstood it in the first place. –  kaiser Oct 18 '11 at 15:50
If you want to update your answer to discuss wp_mail(), I can delete mine. :) –  Chip Bennett Oct 18 '11 at 16:09
No. It's ok to have different answers to cover the whole topic :) –  kaiser Oct 18 '11 at 17:09
Thanks guys! Question was not clear enought because I didn't know if WP had built-in ways to solve the problem, but antispambot sure will do! –  teocomi Oct 18 '11 at 17:16

You could alternately use the wp_mail() function to send the commenter's email on form submission. That way, the post author's email address never has to be exposed publicly in the form field to begin with.

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