Making Democracy Work

Handling Email - the Transition

I am new to League Easy Web. Do I need to read this?

No -- this change happened in December 2007. If you started after that time, you needn't bother with this.

What happens to my email if I "do nothing"?

If you do not look at your League's registration data form and click "approve" (you don't have to make any actual changes), then you will have these basic email addresses defined and will receive email sent to the old addresses: info@yourdomain.org ("info") and webmaster@yourdomain.org ("webmaster") and the new addresses: league@yourdomain.org and wm@yourdomain.org.

The first time you click "approve" for your registration data, "info" and "webmaster" will be removed. If you want to keep one or both of these addresses, then you must define them explicitly.

Also, your Contact Us page is changed so that no one (especially spammers, but not even you) can see the email addresses associated with functions or names on that page. All email addresses on that page are replaced with a link that says "send email". When people click on that link, they will be taken to a form where they can fill out their message and it will be sent to the email address associated with the name on the Contact Us page.

How do I remove both "info@yourdomain.org" and "webmaster@yourdomain.org" email addresses so that we no longer get email sent to those addresses?

Simple. But before you remove "info", please read this FAQ.

Go to your site generation home page and
1. Click on "View/Edit registration data"
2. Click on "Edit" which takes you to the registration form
3. Review the page for values you might want to change, but you needn't make any change.
4. Click on "Preview"
5. Click on "Approve"

Then check what happens by sending an email to those two addresses. You should get a bounce message. From now on anyone sending an email to either of those addresses (all that spam), will get that "bounce" message.

What is a "bounce" message?

When you send an email message to an email address that is not defined, you should get a message in return that says the email address is not defined. Email for all League Easy Web sites are serviced by us (lwvnet.org). If someone sends an email to "webmaster@yourdomain.org" and it is not defined, we will send an email message back to the sender saying that it is not defined.

We are using "info@yourdomain.org" on our business cards, in our VOTER, in our Membership Directory, on our letterhead, and/or on distribution lists. How can I keep this email address?

You must edit your registration data and page down to the area titled "Additional Email Address Forwarding Information". In the next empty "Email Name", enter "info". In the Email Forwarding Address, enter the actual email address of the person(s) who should receive this email.

At the same time, decide whether you want to keep "webmaster" defined. If you don't, then when you approve the change to add "info", "webmaster" will be deleted and "info" will be added. If you want to keep it, then you must also add "webmaster" to the forwarding list.

You may want to slowly change the places where you have published the "info" email address and start to use "league". After a period of time, you can delete the "info" definition. Then anyone sending email to that address will get a bounce message.

Will we continue to get spam?

Most likely. Our change should reduce the amount of spam you get, but we can never guarantee that you won't get spam. If you define the "info" and "webmaster" addresses, you will surely continue to get the same amount of spam you got before we changed.

I have included email addresses on some pages that I've built. What happens to them?

They are not changed.

Can I change these addresses into a "send email" link?

Not exactly. If you wish, instead of something like:

"Please email election@yourdomain.org..."

you could write:

"Please send email to our "Elections"<contact.html> contact...

where "Elections" is the title of the person on the Contact Us page. When people click on "Elections", they will be taken to the Contact Us page where they will hopefully look for "Elections" and click on "send email".

Do you recommend that we change our email addresses as described in the previous question?

If you really don't want someone's email address to be displayed on your page, then yes.

We encode these addresses in a way that makes it a little difficult for spammers to write a program and find them, but not impossible.

If you have had the email address on a web page for a while and the person has NOT received spam, then why go to the trouble to change it?

When League members look at our Contact Us page and no longer see the email addresses, I'm worried they won't think about notifying me when an email address changes. What can I do?

Good idea to think about this. We recommend that periodically you print out or copy the Registration data preview sheet (Site generation home page -> View/Edit Registration Data) and show it to your board members. Ask them to make any needed changes to it. Do this especially after your Annual Meeting.