Graceful Email Obfuscation WordPress Plugin
Simple, highly secure email obfuscation. In brief: always get a clickable link at the end for the user. The JavaScript fallback is fully accessible.
Hiding email addresses from spammers has a long history. There are some obvious golden goals, like making the process seamless to your visitors, and be practicable to implement. The one that often gets left out is accessibility, but in some areas this is actually a legal requirement.[1]
The method
To my knowledge, this plugin implements the best method so far devised. Credit goes to Roel Van Gils for this technique, which he calls Graceful Email Obfuscation.[2] The basic idea is actually very simple: use PHP and JS to hide the address effectively, and make sure the fallback can be used easily by blind or visually impaired users by using a text-based CAPTCHA.
The PHP code takes passed-in emails and generates simply-encoded string using alphabetic characters. It is therefore very hard to imagine what sort of spammer's parser could possibly detect it. The only w
email
obfuscate
spam
Sites running Graceful Email Obfuscation, click to open one
Plugins with a similar footprint
Ranked by how many sites run them — a quick way to compare alternatives.
Usage of Graceful Email Obfuscation over time
June 2023 — July 2024Between June 2023 and July 2024 the number of sites running this plugin went from 357 to 67 — down 290 (-81.2%).
| Month | Sites | Change |
|---|---|---|
| July 2024 | 67 | -4 |
| June 2024 | 71 | -1 |
| May 2024 | 72 | +0 |
| April 2024 | 72 | -1 |
| March 2024 | 73 | -27 |
| February 2024 | 100 | -5 |
| January 2024 | 105 | -50 |
| December 2023 | 155 | -97 |
| November 2023 | 252 | +0 |
| October 2023 | 252 | -23 |
| September 2023 | 275 | -61 |
| August 2023 | 336 | -17 |
| July 2023 | 353 | -4 |
| June 2023 | 357 | — |
Themes used with Graceful Email Obfuscation
Detected most often on sites that run this plugin.
| # | Theme |
|---|---|
| 1 | Townsquare3 |
| 2 | Townsquare3-music |
| 3 | Townsquare3-news |
| 4 | Townsquare3-national |
| 5 | Twentyeleven |
| 6 | Atahualpa |
| 7 | Genesis |
| 8 | Impacthub |
| 9 | Twentyten |
| 10 | Canvas |
| 11 | Kcg |
| 12 | Blutreme-custom |
| 13 | White-as-milk |
| 14 | Jico |
| 15 | Starkers |
| 16 | Enterprise |
| 17 | Contentville |
| 18 | Atahualpa353 |
| 19 | Gcc |
| 20 | Dante |
Sites running Graceful Email Obfuscation
All sites in the collection67 examples from the collection. Open any site to see the theme and plugins we found on it.
