Welcome to October's ZooNews, from Montreal professional Web site design company Zoonini Web Services.

So your customer mailing list is set up in Outlook and you're ready to send out your latest email announcement. You've put off getting a Web-based mailing list system in place because your list is still relatively small and besides, you think to yourself, you only send out announcements once in a while.

You give the message a final once-over and, satisfied that everything is ready to go, you hit "send" triumphantly.

And then a vast wave of horror washes over you, as you suddenly realize that you've accidentally put all 150 of your recipients' names and addresses in the To line of the message – instead of the Bcc field.

Congratulations! You have now revealed the names and email addresses of your 150 customers to each other.

A small business in my neighbourhood recently experienced this nightmare; I was one of their customers affected. "I nearly had a heart attack when we realized the email wasn't sent in Bcc," the owner later admitted.

And it's a perfect example of why desktop email programs like Outlook should never be used by businesses to send out mass mailings. By comparison, Web-based newsletter systems are designed so that this kind of catastrophe can never occur, since each message comes in to the recipient's inbox addressed to them individually.

Web-based announcement systems also have the benefit of allowing subscribers to automatically sign up and unsubscribe – and even update email addresses and other delivery preferences. Just think – there's no need to tediously cut-and-paste names and email addresses in an email program every time you need to add, remove or update a subscriber. Most newsletter systems also have the ability to send a branded HTML newsletter that matches your corporate identity, with colours, logos and other graphic elements that create a consistent and professional look-and-feel.

There are many different types of email newsletter programs to consider, from hosted systems such as Constant Contact and AWeber to software like PHPList which can be installed on your Web server. PHPList has the added benefit of being open-source (freely available for most uses) and it's the program I recommend to many of my clients.

If you're interested in adding a Web-based mailing-list system to your site, just give me a shout and I'd be glad to discuss your needs.

Still not convinced that email newsletters are a worthwhile endeavour in the first place? Check out my colleague A. Charlotte Riley's article E-Newsletters that work to learn about the most common stumbling blocks companies face when launching an e-newsletter, and get helpful tips on one of today's biggest marketing trends.

Are ads for ringtones and pharmaceuticals flooding through the inquiry form on your Web site from people with dubious names like Kent Ambidextrous? (I actually got an email with this name in the From line recently.) Very annoying, right? The "good" news is that much of the spam sent through Web contact forms is automatically produced by spam-generating "robots," which can often be thwarted by adding a simple feature to your form.

You know when you fill out a form online and are made to copy a bunch of random letters or numbers into a text field before hitting Submit? Ever wonder why you're doing that?

This handy tool is called a CAPTCHA, and is a technique used to tell human form-fillers apart from computerized entries. The catchy acronym stands for the lengthy doozy "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." While it's not a perfect solution – visually impaired people can't get past many common CAPTCHAs, and the technique still doesn't stop real-live humans (with nothing better to do, apparently) from spamming your form – it's a start!

Scroll down this page to see a CAPTCHA in action on one of my clients' sites. Try to submit the form without filling out the CAPTCHA "verification image" field and see what happens. (But please don't actually complete and submit the form unless you really do want to contact Get Unstuck and Get Going!)

Does adding a CAPTCHA to your contact form sound like something that might make your life more spam-free? Drop me a line and I'd be pleased to provide an estimate.

Got a technology term you'd like demystified in ZooNews? Send it to questions@zoonini.com.

Box of Crayons' Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun Flash movie now has its very own store – check out everything from inspirational notecards, to a CD copy of the Eight Principles movie, to the original card set that started it all.

We've integrated a mini content-management system (CMS) with arctic-fishing tour operator Tukto Lodge's Web site to make it simple for the client to add news and updates herself through a Web browser. Short news blurbs display right on the homepage with longer items continuing on an interior page, making it easy and quick for return visitors to see what's new. Archives and user comments complete the package.

It's the end of an era. At the end of November, TV Guide Canada will cease publishing the print version of its long-running magazine... which will be reborn as a solely Web-based publication! "Going with a web-only product is a fitting format for the time-sensitive and frequently changing nature of the content this publication provides," TV Guide's publisher said. In other words, moving to the Web will allow TV Guide to keep its listings more up-to-date and better serve its readers.

The company plans to earn revenue through advertising and by providing other sites with content. In making the change of media, TV Guide will save what it would normally spend on paper (typically 30% of total operating costs), printing (15%) and postage (10%). (Stats source: Jam Showbiz)

TV Guide Canada joins Teen People among the latest print mags to devote their resources solely to the Web.

And the Web marches on...

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner