Any WordPress website is subject to spam or other forms of malicious traffic. One of the most common ways to combat this is with CAPTCHA, a test used to determine if your visitor is human. In this article, we will discuss what CAPTCHA is and how you can apply it to your WordPress login or registration form, or any other form you really want.
CAPTCHA stands for “Fully Automated General Turing test for Telling Computers and Humans Separately”. As the name suggests, CAPTCHA is a system designed to separate human input from machine input on the web. It usually takes the form of a simple test for your visitors and doesn’t take much time to complete, but it saves you time wasted on unwanted traffic by identifying your visitors as human and weeding out spammers or bots.
In this article, we will only use reCAPTCHA, Google’s CAPTCHA service.
Adding a CAPTCHA to WordPress websites is especially useful for comments and contact forms. It can also add an extra layer of security to registration forms and password request forms, but not limited to that – any form you want to make a bit more secure can be done with CAPTCHA.
We will show you how you can run your WordPress website more securely and more easily. Advanced noCaptcha and invisible Captcha Addition. However, you must create a Google reCAPTCHA account for CAPTCHA to work.
The main difference between the reCAPTCHA (Google’s CAPTCHA service) versions is the testing applied to your human visitors and/or their devices.
With 1st version of CAPTCHA, the visitor was asked to parse a word or two from a distorted image, often with a strikethrough or color gradient in the background. As of March 2018, this version of CAPTCHA is unavailable.
Version 2 it allows your visitors to tick a checkbox and then either pass them or confirm their choice. v2 Invisible invoked directly when a user clicks a button on your website, or can be called directly using JavaScript.
version 3 it is completely independent of user interaction and controls a large number of functions in the background.
You can choose any of the supported versions depending on the needs of your website.
You will need two to use reCAPTCHA on your website. keys from google. this site key and secret key These are the codes used by Google and given to website owners. They are version dependent and site specific. Since reCAPTCHA is a Google service, you need to log into your Google account and get them directly from the website. You can find the reCAPTCHA registration form. here.
You must fill it with Ticket used to identify your website reCAPTCHA typea Specializationwhere you are going to use the CAPTCHA and a domain to for Ownerie the person responsible for the CAPTCHA.
The rest of the form contains a checkbox that you must tick to confirm. Accept the reCAPTCHA Terms of Service and another Notify Owners in case of unusual activity.
When you do this, you will have registered your website. Now you have both site key and secret key.
You will need these keys to verify your site and connect it to the Google service. We’ll explain how to do this in the section below.
After obtaining the keys you need to install Advanced noCaptcha and invisible Captcha plugin. If you don’t know what a WordPress plugin is, or don’t know how to install and activate a WordPress plugin, we’ve provided you with some really easy-to-follow tutorials.
After installing the plugin, open its settings. The settings are very simple.
Firstly, version The drop-down menu allows you to choose between versions of the CAPTCHA test. Since version 5.1, Contact Form 7 Does not support v2 of CAPTCHA. We’ll show you how you can implement v2 with Contact Form 7 a little later in this tutorial, but for now we’ll choose v3.
The following two fields site key and secret key, respectively. We explained how you can obtain these two keys in the previous section. If you haven’t already, you can get them now by clicking the “Get reCaptcha keys from Google” link in the plugin settings.
Inside Forms In the section we will tick all the forms to enable CAPTCHA for them. This works automatically for supported forms listed below. Active Forms. To introduce CAPTCHA to you Contact Form 7 Contact Form and for other custom forms, you have to use a shortcode provided below. Instructions link to come later.
Inside Other settings section, you can change the default Error message (as we will, You failed the CAPTCHA test. Please try again.). we will leave Captcha Language in auto-detection, you can only use the language you want and is supported. This plugin has been translated into more than 40 languages. we will also leave Failed login Captcha open 0this means that there is no limit to the number of times a CAPTCHA script is loaded, regardless of how many times the user is reviewed.
we will arrange v3 Script Installation with Form Pages. This means that the CAPTCHA test will only be active on form pages, not all pages of your site. this Captcha Score we will leave 0.5, its default value. This setting governs the sensitivity of the CAPTCHA test, with 1 being the lowest tolerance. If you do not know how the v3 test works, we recommend that you do not touch it.
You can also here Whitelist IPs, ensure that trusted users can access your website without any hassle. You can also choose: To hide Captcha for Login users. You can then save your changes and the CAPTCHA will appear on all the forms you marked.
Contact Form 7 It is a popular premium plugin used to create all kinds of forms. Contact Form 7 however forms are not supported by default in Advanced noCaptcha & Invisible Captcha plugin and will not appear in plugin settings below. Active Forms. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use CAPTCHA for you. Contact Form 7 or other special forms.
To add to your CAPTCHA Contact Form 7 contact form, just click Instructions link and copy in settings Contact Form 7 short code:
[anr_nocaptcha g-recaptcha-response]
Next, go to: Contact/Contact Forms Using your left side menu and select the contact form you want to add CAPTCHA, then paste the shortcode wherever you want.
And now all you have to do is add your Contact Form 7 contact form to the desired page or post. CAPTCHA v3 is invisible to your users so you can’t see it, but trust us – it’s there, protecting your website.
But what if you still want CAPTCHA v2 on your Contact Form 7 form? You can still have it, you need another plugin to do it. Our suggested solution is, ReCaptcha v2 for Contact Form 7 Plugin used with Advanced noCaptcha and Invisible Captcha plugin.
You will need to generate a separate site key and secret key. v2. Retrieving these keys is already covered in the “How to Get reCAPTCHA Keys from Google” section of this article.
You will need to re-enter them in your Advanced noCaptcha and invisible Captcha plugin settings page and also change the version as follows. v2As discussed in “How to Install Advanced noCaptcha Plugin”.
Once you’ve done all that, it’s time to install the ReCaptcha v2 for Contact Form 7 plugin. Then use the menu on the left to navigate to its settings located under it. Contact/reCaptcha Version.
you will need to set Using reCaptcha reCaptcha Version 2 and your reCaptcha Source to google.com. When done, click To send.
Now all you have to do is copy [recaptcha] Contact Form 7 shortcode to use in your contact form.
Set route to Contact/Contact Forms and select the contact form you want to use v2 CAPTCHA to protect. Then paste your shortcode and Save your form.
Your login screen will now have a v2 reCaptcha…
… as well as your contact form.
As a result
As you can see, adding an extra layer of security this time powered by Google only takes a few minutes and helps protect your website from unwanted traffic. In just a few clicks, your forms will be safer than bots and you won’t have to spend a lot of time weeding out spam to get a single genuine user comment.
Support our work ❤️
If you enjoyed this article, consider leaving a tip to help us keep publishing great content.
