How to make a link for your blog visitors to contact you

Someone emailed me about a problem using the HTML mailto code for Blogger Beta, so I am now going to describe how to go about it. This will describe methods involving the Layout page, and if you are not familiar with the Layout page, see my earlier posts. (This one: How to add link list to sidebar>) (click "BACK" button to get back to this page).

Sign into your Blogger beta Dashboard (beta.blogger.com)
There will be a list of blogs there (you may have one or more.
Click >Layout (at the far right of the bar)
In the layout, click "Add a page element".
In the pop-up, select HTML/Javascript and click "Add to blog"
You will get the following box as shown below (click to enlarge):

Change the email address to you address, and if you wish, you may also change the "Email Me" to something else like for example "Contact Me".
Click "Save changes"
In the Layout, a new HTML page element will be added to the top of the sidebar. If this is the position you want, then your job is done. If on the other hand, you want it elsewhere, place your mouse over the new page element. The cursor will change to a cross. Drag and drop it into your prefered position.
Preview.
If satisfied, click "Save" at the top right-hand corner of the page, and you are done.

I have placed such a "Email Me" link in my blog Testing Blogger Beta (close new window to get back to this page). It is somewhere at the bottom of the page. You can surf over to there and test it if you want.

You should be warned that your email address will be harvested by robots for sending spam, and what I have done is to create a special gmail for my blog visitors to contact me. I created a special gmail address for that purpose. So far, the problem hasn't been that bad as practically all the spam end up in the spam folder, and are easy to delete. Almost none end up in my inbox. If you want a gmail invitation, just email me.

Update 15 August 2007There are problems with not receiving some email notifications for comment moderation, and in reporting this, I have being asked to check the spam folder. While this is not too difficult as they are all in the same folder and spams are easy to spot, they takes up time. Plus I have discovered that a very small number of emails of bloggers with requests for help have ended up in the spam folder. I have thus decided to scramble the email address. Refer to Scramble email address