Simon Stafferton works on technical SEO, analytics and direct-booking conversion for student accommodation and build-to-rent operators. 2017-03-01T00:00:00Z https://simonstafferton.com/ Simon Stafferton 2017-03-01T00:00:00Z https://simonstafferton.com/and-in-the-beginning-there-was/ <div class="entry-content clearfix"> <p><p>So this site is not that new, but only recently have I started putting a bit more energy into it, adding content and making it work better, faster etc. So this morning, I added a new contact form to the <a href="https://simonstafferton.com/contact-me/" plerdy-tracking-id="23057959801">Contact Me</a> page, this form had never existed before. It took literally 7 minutes from saving the page with the form for me to receive the first spam submission. Seven minutes! The site doesn’t even get much traffic yet, so I found this a bit shocking. In the time it’s taken me to write this, I have got a 2nd spam entry!</p></p> <p>Ok, I admit I didn’t have the ReCaptcha or a honeypot set up, but the speed of that is amazing. Clearly, the site is on a huge list and some people have the software set up to send this kind of stuff out at hyper-speed en masse.</p> <p>But it made me think, I need a better solution than the typical&nbsp; ‘I am not a robot’ type checks to filter out this junk, while still allowing genuine contact enquires through.</p> <p>I have found a great solution that I will test out, <strong><em>without</em></strong> adding any other kind of anti-spam checks to the form… and report back in a day to see how many got through!</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p></div></p> 2020-11-01T00:00:00Z https://simonstafferton.com/google-analytics-channel-groupings/ <blockquote> <p><strong>Migration note:</strong> the body of this post still needs pasting in from the WordPress export. Title and URL are correct; check the date against the export.</p> </blockquote> <p>If you are looking into customising or editing the default channel groupings in Google Analytics, you are now in the right place. I have done this dozens of times and have pulled together the resources that helped, along with my own understanding.</p> 2021-03-12T00:00:00Z https://simonstafferton.com/the-speed-of-spam/ <blockquote> <p><strong>Migration note:</strong> the body of this post still needs pasting in from the WordPress export. Title, date, URL and excerpt are correct.</p> </blockquote> <p>So this site is not that new, but only recently have I started putting a bit more energy into it, adding content and making it work better and faster. This morning I added a new contact form to the Contact page — a form that had never existed before.</p> <p>It took literally seven minutes from saving the page for me to receive the first spam submission. Seven minutes.</p>