Getting odd encoding results

Hey @sharpenedpixels – Thank you a lot for your message, as well as all of the additional details and tests, really appreciate that!

Indeed, emails encode differently in certain circumstances which is a feature and required to provide protection even for emails that usually can’t be encoded or break the site when you do so.
For example do we soft-encode emails that are within attributes. E.g.:
<div user-email=”[email protected]”>Some text</div>
This will encode it using entity encoding to provide still security while not damaging the logic of the website.

To clarify what exactly is encoded and how, we created a help file within our documentation: https://ironikus.com/docs/knowledge-base/what-will-be-protected-2/

Since you do not use the javascript encoding features, which include kind of a round-robin mechanism that encodes the email addresses using different javascript methods, and you use the exact same HTML on two different sites, the encoding should not differ too much between both of them.
If you could share a link to this site with me including an explanation which emails you feel are oddly encoded, I’m happy to take a further look at it.

In case yous site is confidential, you can also reach out to us using our contact form: https://ironikus.com/contact/

I hope this helps so far. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out at any time. ??

Hi @ironikus,

Thanks for your response and clearing that up. Still I’m unsure why one page hasn’t applied mailto links like the other two. You can see the three examples below with explainations:

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/
Uses the standard WordPress editor but has no content in the text editor field.
Encoding emails fine and adding mailto links to all email addresses.

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-without-divi/
Uses the standard WordPress editor and has email and phone number with encode shortcode in the text editor field.
Emails are encoded, but use a different technique to the homepage and the emails are not being converted to mailto links.

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-with-divi/
Uses the Divi builder to add content.
I have used an array of different solutions including ACF fields populating the sections with the same content throughout.
Emails are encoded fine and also added mailto links.

NOTE: I tested adding content to the homepage content field, to see if it was affected. I tried adding the same content from the page https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-without-divi/, which was this:

[email protected]

[eeb_protect_content]<a href="tel:+441234567890">01234 567 890</a>[/eeb_protect_content]

This then caused the page to not convert emails to mailto links, although, like the other page, the emails were encoded. Very odd.

I also tested adding this to the content field:

[email protected]

Again, this caused the same problem.

I also tested adding this to the content field:

[eeb_protect_content]<a href="tel:+441234567890">01234 567 890</a>[/eeb_protect_content]

But it was fine and all emails were encoded and included adding mailto links. So seems there is an issue when an email is added to the content field.

If you need anymore info, please let me know. I can setup more pages with examples if needed. I’d love this to get sorted as this will be a really useful plugin.

I look forward to your response.

Hey @sharpenedpixels – Thank you very much for your detailed message and all the added information.
I checked on that these days more in details and I can confirm that the shortcode [eeb_protect_content] does not include a feature for turning emails into mailto links.
I have added that feature to our list for the next version launch, so you can expect it to be fixed with the next release.
for now, you can simply include the full mailto link into the shortcode, which will also cause to display the email as a mailto link.
In case you have any further questions in the meantime, I’m happy to help. ??

Hi @ironikus,

I feel you may have completely misunderstood the problem here, as your answer is confusing and doesn’t seem to answer my problem.

The shortcode [eeb_protect_content] is for protecting phone numbers, is it not? So I can’t understand why you have said it doesn’t turn emails into mailto links. This is not the issue.

The issue is as explained above that some emails on some of the pages are not being converted into mailto links and some pages are. I have not used any shortcodes to wrap around the emails, just typed in plain text emails like this [email protected] in the content areas that I have tested across the website.

I was under the impression that if I enabled the ‘convert emails into mailto links’ setting in the advanced settings section, then this would automatically convert all plain text emails across the website without the need to add any shortcode or anything. And, it works flawlessly on most pages, but just not the one page that had the email typed into the main content field.

If it would help, I am happy to do a screenshare with you and call on the computer to explain fully. That way it may be easy to explain the issue, as I feel I may not have explained it well enough previously.

Hey @sharpenedpixels – thank you for the clarification – I really might got confused there.
The short code allows you not only to protect phone numbers, but any content you add to it.

Since I understood now that you don’t use any shortcodes, I’ll go ahead and make some further tests later on to figure out where this might come from.
It’ll be also great if you could provide us with a demo account so that we can take a closer look at the setup on your staging site.
To do that, it’ll be great if you can simply drop us a message at https://ironikus.com/contact – this will create a ticket which I will take over to continue the testing.
Thank you very much for your time and the explanations.

I have just sent a message via your form on https://ironikus.com/contact

Kind regards,
Sharpened Pixels

Hey @sharpenedpixels – I also took a closer look in regards to this issue, which I was able to create a temporary fix for.
Before adding it to our next release, I’d like to get your feedback on it if it solves your mentioned issue from your end as well.
Therefore, I created a temporary version for you which includes a fix for it. You can download it via the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnk9diqql98uxog/email-encoder-bundle-sharpenedpixels.zip?dl=1

If you have any additional questions upfront, feel free to let me know at any time.
Looking forward to your feedback. ??

Hi @ironikus,

Thanks for investigating this further.

I downloaded the new zip and installed it to test and it seems to be working as expected.

I created 4 pages and all are encoding the emails in some way and converting them to mailto links. Also, any email displayed in the meta title and/or description are being encoded as well, which is perfect.

See the 4 pages below:

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-without-divi/

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-without-divi-no-email-in-title/

https://plugintest.sharpenedpixels.co.uk/test-page-with-divi/

Thanks very much.

Hey @sharpenedpixels – That’s great, I will add the feature then to our next version.
Thanks a lot for your tests.

No problem at all @ironikus =)

Hey @sharpenedpixels – I hope you are doing well.
Just wanted to notify you about the new version we have just launched. It includes the hereby discussed fix as well.
If you have any additional questions, feel free to let me know. ??

Hi @ironikus,

Thank you for letting me know. I have just updated the plugin to the latest. I’ll let you know if I find any other bugs.

Thanks very much for all your help.