[NLRS] Web site updates

[John P. Toscano]

If you were looking for the Antenna Gain results from the 2002
Microwave Gathering of the NLRS, they are now posted on the
web site at:

  http://www.nlrs.org/AntennaGain/2002uWav.htm

There is a link to this page on the home page, and also a link to
it on the page of pictures of the gathering itself.  I also found
that the link on the photo page to the North Shore Expedition was
not set up correctly, and fixed that.  Funny, no one mentioned to
me that it was broken. . .

There have been a few other "housekeeping" changes throughout.
As always, at the top of the home page is the last revision date,
which is a hot link to the edit log.

  http://www.nlrs.org/edit_log.htm

One change that is being gradually implemented is the elimination
of all links of the form "mailto:someone@someplace.org".  These
links are, unfortunately, spam bait.  Unscrupulous spammers have
programs called "spiders" that crawl around the web, looking for
links of that sort, and "harvest" the email addresses that they
find.  These get fed to the spammers and they start mailbombing
the unlucky victims with their trash.

I suspect that QTH.NET may have some sort of software in place that
impairs the function of these spiders, because it does not appear
to me that I have gotten onto any spam lists via links to my
email address that appear on the NLRS pages, even though, like
the rest of you, I am certainly not immune to the spammers.  But
I don't want to take any more chances than necessary.

So as time permits, (and since most of the remaining links are to
my email address), I am removing the existing links and replacing
them with links to a form-based page.  Since the "spiders" don't
know how to fill out forms, and since the code on the form page
executes a PHP program whose source code is not visible to the
outside world, the email addresses used in this way cannot be
found by current technology.  The first links to be so replaced are
at the very bottom of the home page, if you are curious to see how
they work.  (Once you get to the form page, you won't actually send
a message unless you click the SEND button.  You can just click on
the BACK button of your browser instead, if you don't want to email
the webmasters.

This method also has the advantage of allowing a more structured
message to the webmasters.  For example, on the "beacons" page,

  http://www.nlrs.org/BeaconList.htm

...if you want to submit an update or addition, there is now a form
that prompts you for ALL of the fields, to hopefully minimize the
chance that you will leave something out unintentionally.  The
PHP code will then bundle up all those answers into a formatted
mail message to me, which I can then use to easily update the
page.

I will probably add a similar form in the future for submitting
claimed scores, as an alternative to free-text email.  With a
little luck, I can even have the page check your math (or do it
for you), present it back for your approval/correction, and then
give you the option to send it only to the webmasters, or also
post it to the mailing list.  (When I get even more skilled at
this PHP and mySQL programming, I may even get the form to update
the claimed scores web pages!)

73 de W0JT