Web2Messenger [BETA]

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What Is Web2Messenger?

Web2Messenger is a service that allows people to send messages directly from either this website or your own to your .NET Messenger Service account (e.g. MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger).

Web2Messenger was conceived to allow website owners to get instant feedback from their users as an alternative to e-mail which requires either revealing your e-mail address to potential spammers or creating/using complex PHP/Perl email forms. Web2Messenger solves those problems by providing the contact form on our website and allows instantaneous message delivery (provided the webmaster is signed into MSN Messenger). More advanced users can even craft their own HTML forms and use JavaScript to control exactly how their users can contact them.

Status Images were simply a logical extension of the service we already offered. Our bots already knew the MSN Messenger status, display name and personal message of the Web2Messenger users so creating an image from that data was the obvious next step.

Web2Messenger's use isn't just limited to webmasters, though! People have found uses for it by including their status image and a link to their Send Message/Profile page in their forum signatures and others have added their Web2Messenger details to their Ebay sales to allow potential buyers to ask questions about the product and get real-time responses, greatly increasing the chances of a sale! Web2Messenger can even be used as a form of offline messaging. If a message is sent to a Web2Messenger user who is offline we will store the message and then deliver it to them when they next sign in.

What Isn't Web2Messenger?

Web2Messenger is not a web-based MSN Messenger client. Plenty of web-based alternatives to the standard MSN Messenger client already exist. Web2Messenger is the first service - to the best of our knowledge - that allows messages to be delivered to an MSN Messenger account without the sender needing an account themselves and without the recipient disclosing their Passport address. If you wish to sign in to the .NET Messenger Service via your web browser we recommend you use MSN's Web Messenger.

What are the Usage Requirements?

To use Web2Messenger you must have a .NET Passport and a .NET Messenger client. This could be any one of: MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, Trillian, GAIM, MSN Web Messenger or, in fact, any other client that can connect to the .NET Messenger service.

You must obviously sign in to your Passport account once in a while to retrieve any messages that have been sent to you.

How Much Does Web2Messenger Cost To Use?

Web2Messenger is totally free of charge. We fund our coding time, server space and bandwidth with the advertising that you can see around the site, so we kindly request that you do not block this advertising - even programmers have to eat, remember, otherwise who would write all the software that your computer uses daily?

How Do I Use Web2Messenger...

First you must register on our site. This can either be done by receiving an invitation from an existing member or by clicking the "Register" link at the top of the page if there are any available registrations available. Due to the limited amount of space on our bots registration is restricted to some degree.

Once you have registered one of our bots will add you to its contact list. The address will end in '@web2messenger.com'. Then you must validate your Passport by clicking the link that will be sent to you by the bot on MSN Messenger. Now you can begin receiving messages via the Web2Messenger service.

There are currently two ways of utilising Web2Messenger:

... From Web2Messenger.com?

This is the easiest method. You simply direct people to http://www.web2messenger.com/Username. The username after the / is not case sensitive and the "www." is optional - http://web2messenger.com/Username would work equally well.

This URL could be further shortened by using a service such as TinyURL or SnipURL.

... From my own website?

This option should prove popular with webmasters and bloggers, however we strongly recommend that you have at least a basic knowledge of HTML/ XHTML to use it.

To use this method you will need to create a standard HTML form. There are a few requirements of it, however:

action. The 'action' parameter of the <form> tag must point to 'http://www.web2messenger.com/Username', where 'Username' is your username.
method. The 'method' parameter of the <form> tag must be 'post'
fields. You must have <input> tags named the following:
- w2m_name. This must contain the name of the message sender and has a limit of 32 characters. This limit will be enforced on our side, but it is preferable for you to enforce it with the maxlength parameter and/or JavaScript.
- w2m_email. This must contain the email address of the message sender and has a limit of 512 characters. Ideally this should be the sender's MSN Messenger passport address, but this is not required. As with w2m_name the length is enforced by us but you should enforce it, too.
- w2m_message. This should contain the message that the user wishes to send to you. The length is limited to 1024 characters (1KiB), again enforced by us but should be enforced by you as well.
optional fields. The following field names are optional but preferable:
- w2m_success. This should contain a full URL for us to direct the user's browser to if the message was successfully stored for sending, and should probably be a hidden field.
- w2m_failure. This should contain a full URL for us to direct the user's browser to if an error occurred while storing the message, and should probably be a hidden field.
- w2m_sig. This is entirely optional but useful for people using this form on multiple sites. The contents of this field will be appended to the received message, so that you can easily see which site the message was sent from.
Additionally, you may provide your own CAPTCHA by-pass code in a (preferably hidden) field named w2m_captchabypass. This code can be obtained here. If this code is present and correct, the person using your form will not have to complete a CAPTCHA challenge before sending you a message. If you omit this code, and the sender is not logged in to Web2Messenger, they will have to complete a CAPTCHA before their message is sent.

Note that if the user is already logged in to the Web2Messenger site their registered Display Name and Passport address will be used instead of the supplied values. You may wish to mention this on your website, too.

A very basic example of this form:

<form action="http://www.web2messenger.com/Username" method="post">
	<fieldset>
		Name: <input type="text" name="w2m_name" maxlength="64" /><br />
		E-Mail: <input type="text" name="w2m_email" maxlength="255" /><br />
		Message: <textarea name="w2m_message"></textarea><br />
		<input type="hidden" name="w2m_success" value="http://www.MY_WEB_SITE.com/messenger/success.htm" />
		<input type="hidden" name="w2m_failure" value="http://www.MY_WEB_SITE.com/messenger/failure.htm" />
		<input type="hidden" name="w2m_captchabypass" value="0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef01234567" />
		<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Send Message" />
	</fieldset>
</form>

Note that http://www.MY_WEB_SITE.com/messenger/success.htm and http://www.MY_WEB_SITE.com/messenger/failure.htm are just examples. You must change them to URLs pointing to pages on your own website or remove them altogether (they are optional, as mentioned above).

We would appreciate a small "Powered by Web2Messenger" (or similar) message on your site form somewhere, though this is optional. We are offering this service for free; the least you can do is let your users know who spent the time to create this system, don't you think?

If an error occurs sending the message the user's browser will be sent to the URL located in the w2m_failure field. Appended to this URL as a GET variable called "w2m_errors" containing the error code. This code is a bitwise number indicating which error(s) occurred. The possible bit values are as follows:

1: The provided w2m_name is invalid.
2: The provided w2m_email is invalid.
4: The provided w2m_name is already used by a Web2Messenger user.
8: The provided w2m_email is already used by a Web2Messenger user.
16: No message has been entered.
64: The provided w2m_name is too long. Max is 32 characters.
128: The provided w2m_email is too long. Max is 512 characters.
256: The provided w2m_message is too long. Max is 1024 characters.
512: w2m_name or w2m_email contains words/characters that may indicate to the recipient that the sender is Web2Messenger staff, which is not allowed for security reasons.

To determine which error(s) were found you must bitwise AND each of the possible values (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 64, 128, 256 and 512) with the value provided by the w2m_errors variable. The result will either be 0 (no match - this is not one of the occurring errors) or the number that you ANDed with the error code (match - this error occurred). For example if the error code was '19' you would receive the following results from bitwise AND functions on them:

1 & 19 = 1
2 & 19 = 2
4 & 19 = 0
8 & 19 = 0
16 & 19 = 16
32 & 19 = 0
64 & 19 = 0
128 & 19 = 0
256 & 19 = 0
512 & 19 = 0

Therefore errors 1, 2 and 16 occurred - the submitted form was totally blank.

As an example, here is how to implement this in PHP:

<?php
if (!is_numeric($_GET['w2m_errors'])) {
	//Someone's been changing the URL...
	echo "Invalid error code!";
} else {
	//Define the error messages
	$errors = array(  1  =>"The name you supplied is invalid.",
			  2  =>"The e-mail address you supplied is invalid.",
			  4  =>"The name you supplied is already used by a Web2Messenger user.",
			  8  =>"The e-mail address you supplied is already used by a Web2Messenger user.",
			  16 =>"No message was sent.",
			  64 =>"The name you entered is too long. The maximum length is 32 characters.",
			  128=>"The e-mail address you entered is too long. The maximum length is 512 characters.",
			  256=>"The message you entered is too long. The maximum length is 1024 characters.",
			  512=>"For security reasons you are not allowed to use names or e-mail addresses that may indicate that you are Web2Messenger staff."
			  );
	echo "The following errors occurred:<br />\r\n";
	foreach ($errors as $errCode => $errText) {
		if (($errCode & $_GET['w2m_errors']) > 0)
			//This error code matches with the supplied code
			echo $errText . "<br />\r\n";
	}
}
?>

This code will work with recent versions of PHP 4 and also PHP 5.

Also included as GET variables will be the name, e-mail address and message sent to us. These will be in the variables w2m_name, w2m_email and w2m_message respectively.

How Do I Get A Status Image?

First you must enable your Status Image in your Preferences page.

Then you must choose one of the third-party image generators that are available. This used to be a service that Web2Messenger provided directly, however spiraling processor usage forced us to stop image generation ourselves and allow third parties to access the information needed to generate images themselves.

This information is available in three forms for people who wish to create their own images. Simply append the given file extension (.xxx) to http://www.web2messenger.com/status/Username (where Username is your username) to get your information.

Text (.txt): The basic but least, reliable method - plain text. Users with multi-line display names can cause this to become unusable.
XML (.xml): A more complex, but somewhat more reliable method. Unicode characters are not properly encoded in this method, causing some problems.
Base 64 (.b64): This method provides a string which, when decoded using base64_decode() and unserialize() in PHP results in a PHP array containing all the relevant details.

It is worth noting that Web2Messenger does still offer small images that indicate only your status. There are three styles available: MSN Messenger 7, Windows Live Messenger 8 and an 80x15 Web2Messenger-specific version. The URL to these images is http://www.web2messenger.com/smallstatus/<style>/Username.png where Username is your Web2Messenger username and <style> is one of "v7", "v8" or "w2m" for MSN Messenger 7, Windows Live Messenger 8 and Web2Messenger-style images, respectively.

Why Does My Send Message Page not Exist?

You must be both registered and validated before your Send Message page will become available. Please ensure that you have validated your Passport address.

What if the Bot is Offline?

Sometimes the bot will crash or disconnect from the .NET Messenger service. Nothing is perfect - especially not something that relies on third party networks. Therefore you will occasionally notice that the bot is offline. If you notice this to be the case then please do not worry. All your messages are still being stored on the server and will be delivered when the bot is next online, which should hopefully be very soon.

The bot must currently be restarted by hand, which cannot happen if its operators (who reside in Europe) are asleep. Therefore, don't expect the bot to restart between approximately 1am and 7am GMT. Be patient and all will be well shortly.

Will My Messages be Read by Anyone Else?

No one other than you will be able to read the messages sent to you unless you report a message to the administrators, in which case they will be sent a copy of the message along with various information about it (the sender's name, email address, IP address, etc). It is, of course, your responsibility to keep your password secret (and strong) and your own computer secure. We cannot be held responsible for people reading your messages if you tell someone your password or allow them access to your computer, etc. Additionally the Administrators may need to read some messages to diagnose server problems or fix bugs in the code. Please read our legal information linked to at the bottom of every page for more details.

How Do I View Previously Received Messages?

Previously received messages are stored in your Message Archive. From here you can view, organise and delete previously received messages, including any messages that you have yet to receive if either you or the bot are offline.

Messages that you move to the Trash directory can be deleted by the system in order to free up space to store more messages. Messages in the Trash will only be deleted if your storage is full and someone attempts to send you a message. Messages outside of the Trash will not be deleted. If your storage is full, you have no messages in your Trash directory and someone attempts to send you a message they will receive an error message.

What is This Passport Validation?

To protect our users from spam we force all new users to first validate their Passport address before they can begin to receive messages on it. This validation is simple and merely involves clicking a link in a message sent to the new user's Passport address via the .NET Messenger service. Until this link is clicked the user effectively doesn't exist and will not appear to users trying to send them messages.

Once the URL given in the message has been visited the user's account will become fully active and other people can start sending them messages.

You can have your Passport validation code re-sent by clicking here.

If you're afraid that you mistyped your passport at registration, you can still change it in your Preferences.

What is "Remember Me"?

If the "Remember Me" box is checked Web2Messenger will set a cookie on your computer that stores your login details so that you do not have to log in every time you visit the website. If the box is unchecked when you log in only a session cookie will be set, which will expire when you close your browser window.

Of course you may log out at any time by clicking the "Logout" link. This will delete the Web2Messenger login cookie.

I Have a Question that isn't Answered Here...

Why don't you head over to our forums? There will always be staff members and other users of the service there who will be happy to help you with any questions you have. We also welcome bug reports and service suggestions, so if you have anything to say about Web2Messenger just post it on our forums!