I was asked by a visitor how he could insert a clickable email address into his website using the BlueGriffon web editor. Such a link, when clicked, should theoretically start up that person's email software.
It's possible to put an email address on a web page without making it into a link (ie, just type it as plain text). In many ways, an unadorned email address is actually easier for your visitors to use, since they can easily select (ie, highlight) it, and copy and paste it into whatever email facility they happen to use, be it a program running on their computer, or a webmail service. When you make it into a link, they have to be more precise when highlighting it since they may otherwise accidentally click the link.
The action taken by a browser when someone clicks an email address link depends on the operating system (ie, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, etc) and the browser used, as well as how that person has configured his/her system. As such, it may not do what you imagine it does. On some systems, clicking such a link has no effect whatsoever, making your visitors wonder why nothing happened. On others, the browser may issue a (potentially scary) message that the web page wants to start a program on their computer (namely, the email software).
This is another reason why you should consider simply typing the email address as normal text on your page instead of making it into a link. There's less confusion on the part of your visitors when they click it, and something unusual happens, or worse, nothing happens at all.
You can test what such a link does on your particular system by clicking this dummy email link: dummy-email-link@example.com. Again, remember that what you experience will not necessarily be what your visitors go through. So even if you find that you are seamlessly taken to your email software, it doesn't mean anything.
An alternative to using a clickable email address is to put a contact form on your website. A step-by-step tutorial on how you can do this with BlueGriffon can be found in the article How to Add a Contact Form to Your Website using BlueGriffon.
In fact, if you still need to publish your email address (eg, because your business contacts prefer to reach you that way), you can do both: display your email address and put up a contact form.
A word of warning: email addresses displayed on websites are spam magnets and a source of information to criminals
(eg, they can use it to pretend to be you or to hack into your accounts elsewhere). You may be able to slightly reduce the
spam problem by making sure your email service or software has good spam filters. Even then, be prepared
to be inundated by spam every day. Unless this email address is some official company email address, like
sales@example.com or support@example.com that is not used for anything else,
I generally don't recommend that you publish it on your site. In fact, if your website is a personal or hobby site,
put up a contact form instead
of revealing your email address to all and sundry.
Since my visitor asked specifically about using the BlueGriffon web editor to insert an email address, this tutorial operates on the assumption that you have some basic knowledge of how to use BlueGriffon, and already have a website. If this is not true, you should first read my articles on starting a website and designing one with BlueGriffon.
Start up BlueGriffon and open the web page in question.
Select (ie, highlight) the text that you want to make into an email link. For example, you may have written "yourname@example.com" on your page, and you want to make that address clickable. (In fact, the displayed text doesn't even have to be an email address, it can be even things like "click here to email me".)
For those who don't know what I mean when I say "select the text", drag your mouse over the words so as to highlight them. This typically involves clicking your mouse's left button with the pointer positioned at the first character, then holding that button down while moving the mouse over the rest of the words, releasing the button only when all the relevant characters are highlighted.
Click "Insert" from the menu bar and "Link" from the drop down menu that appears.
In the "Links" dialog box that pops up, type the email address into the "Target" field.
Click to put a tick in the checkbox for "This is an email address".
Click the "OK" button.
After you do that, you will see that the text you selected is now a link. If you have not altered the appearance of links on your page, the words should now be underlined, and in blue.
To test it, you will need to open the page in a web browser. Hover your mouse over the link, and you should
see something like "mailto:yourname@example.com" (with your email address after the
"mailto:" part) in the browser's status bar (usually found at the bottom of the browser).
If you click it, the default action as defined by your browser and operating system will be taken.
As noted above, this varies from browser to browser, and system to system, and may even be to ignore the click.
Copyright © 2018 Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
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How to Insert a Clickable Email Address into a Web Page with BlueGriffon
