Web Development & Design/ 31st May 2017/Jamie Hoyles
We have seen cyber security feature prominently in the news recently following the WannaCry ransomware attack. I’ve been contacted by a number of people wishing to put a stop to nuisance spam emails sent through the popular Contact Form 7 Email plugin. This article details a number of steps you can take to put an end to unsolicited mailings…
Install Akismet
Akismet checks your comments and contact form submissions against a global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content. The plug-in automatically checks all comments and filters out the ones that look like spam.
To activate you will need to register with Akismet and obtain an API Key. These keys are free for blogs and personal websites.
Install the Contact Form 7 Honeypot Plugin
This addition to Contact Form 7 adds basic honeypot anti-spam functionality to thwart spambots.
While some spam is manually submitted, the vast majority is posted by bots scripted in a specific way to submit spam to the largest number of form types. Using this method they somewhat blindly fill in fields, regardless of whether the field should be filled in or not. This is how a honeypot catches the bot — it introduces an additional field in the form that if filled out will cause the form not to validate.
Add reCAPTCHA
I must have spent a good couple of hours searching for an easy to use Captcha plug in. After many failed attempts I stumbled on Contact Form 7’s own built in form. To access, simply navigate to ‘Contact’ on the left hand menu bar and select ‘Integration’. You will be presented with a link to google.com/recaptcha – You will need to sign up to gain an API key. Next, add a shortcode to your contact form and reCAPTCHA is displayed.
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These 3 easy steps provide a great barrier against spam and malicious emails being sent via your website’s contact form.
Office Manager & Customer Account handler at Clook Internet. SEO Enthusiast & WordPress Web Developer in my spare time. Outside work I’m a supporter of Blackburn Rovers, like fast cars and watching fast bikes…
Released4/11/2019 As a maker of WordPress-powered websites, you've likely needed to create and add many contact forms. In this course, take a closer look at the task of creating contact forms for your WordPress site. Using three different plugins—Jetpack, Ninja Forms, and Gravity Forms—instructor Patrick Rauland walks through the process of setting up and configuring each plugin, working with the advanced features in each option, and receiving form submissions. Contact forms are a must-have for any WordPress-powered website, and these plugins—which range from simple and free to complex and pricey—can do a lot more than just ask for names, addresses, and messages. Unleash the power of contact forms, and find the plugin that's right for you. Topics include:
1h 37m
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- [Instructor] One thing you need to include in just about every website is a contact form, and these should never be overlooked because they help you get new clients, project proposals, guest posts, or general inquiries. This course is going to cover best practices for contact forms, and we're going to show you how to create a contact form with some of the most popular options in the WordPress world. We'll start with the easier and free options, and work our way up to the more complex and more expensive options. I'll also show you some of the advanced and unique features for each form. Hi there, I'm Patrick Rauland. I've been a WordPress Developer for almost a decade, and I've built a lot of sites for clients, as well as for my own projects. Let's get going.
Do you want to prevent getting spam form submissions?
A lot of those spam submissions are automated with bots. However, with WPForms, and just a few steps, you can build spam-free WordPress contact forms. That way, you can improve the quality of your lead generation.
In this article, we’ll show you how to add reCAPTCHA to your WordPress forms, how to use the WPForms Custom Captcha addon, and how to create a spam-free contact form without using CAPTCHA. We’ll also share a bonus strategy that works no matter which solution you use.
Here are some quick links for you so you can check out which type of spam-free form you want to create for your site:
How to Add reCAPTCHA to Your Contact Forms
Here we’re going to show you how to create a contact form that will have an interactive reCAPTCHA. This reCAPTCHA section is for site visitors to click on to prove they’re human when they submit a form.
Why Use reCAPTCHA?
1. Block spam – By verifying that a human is submitting a form, all automated spam attempts are blocked.
2. Easy to use – Originally CAPTCHA was created to do two things at the same time: help machines translate non-digital books and fight spam. But, the jumbled text was difficult for users to answer correctly. Google has since improved their CAPTCHA tool, with reCAPTCHA v2 to be much easier for users. Now instead of entering text, users can just put their mouse over the checkbox and the tool understands that this is not an automated spam bot. This is much easier for users to prove that they are not robots.
In the fall of 2018, Google released something called reCAPTCHA v3, which uses a behind-the-scenes scoring system to help you detect abusive traffic all over your website without asking users to do anything. reCAPTCHA v2 has two options, interactive checkboxes and invisible reCAPTCHA. This guide will focus on adding reCAPTCHA v2’s interactive checkboxes or invisible reCAPTCHA to your WordPress forms.
How to Add a reCAPTCHA Checkbox to Your Forms
Now, let’s see how to add an interactive reCAPTCHA checkbox to your contact forms.
Step 1: Create a Simple Contact Form in WordPress
The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step by step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
How To Remove Spam In Wordpress Contact Forms Online
Next, you’ll need to create a WordPress contact form. For help with this step, check out our tutorial on how to create a simple contact form in WordPress.
Step 2: Configure reCAPTCHA Settings
Next, you need to configure reCAPTCHA settings in WordPress.
To start, go to WPForms » Settings. Then, click on the reCAPTCHA tab.
Choose v2 reCAPTCHA to add an interactive reCAPTCHA box to your contact form.
reCAPTCHA is a service provided by Google. It’s free, but requires a site key and secret key. You can easily generate those keys for your site by visiting Google’s reCAPTCHA setup page.
Once you’re on this setup page, click on the Admin console button in the top right corner.
Adobe captivate 5.5 serial. Then, sign in to your Google account.
After logging in, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can register your site for reCAPTCHA.
If you’ve already registered a website for Google reCAPTCHA in the past, you’ll see a different screen. In that case, just click on the plus sign to Register a new site.
Enter the name of your website in the label field. This is for your own use, so that you can identify the website if you ever needed to get the keys again.
Then, choose the type of reCAPTCHA you want to add to your website. In this example, we’ll select reCAPTCHA v2 and then the “I’m not a robot” Checkbox.
After that you need to add your website’s domain, such as example.com.
To save your site, click the Submit button.
Next, you’ll see a page with a site key and secret key for your website.
Copy your site and secret key, and switch back to the WPForms » Settings page. Paste your site and secret keys under the reCAPTCHA settings.
Click on the Save Settings button to store your changes.
Step 3: Add reCAPTCHA to Your Contact Form
Adding reCAPTCHA to your WordPress form is easy to do.
To enable reCAPTCHA in the simple contact form you created earlier, go to Settings » General in the form editor.
At the bottom, check the box next to Enable Google Checkbox v2 reCAPTCHA.
Lastly, click Save.
Now you can add your contact form, complete with Google reCAPTCHA, to your website.
Step 4: Add Contact Form with reCAPTCHA to WordPress
WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets.
Let’s take a look at the most common post/page embed option.
To start, create a new post or page in WordPress and then click on the Add WPForms icon inside of a block.
Next, select your form from the dropdown in the modal popup.
Then, publish your post or page so your form will appear on your website.
How to Use the WPForms Custom Captcha Addon
If you don’t want to use Google reCAPTCHA, but know you want to add an interactive reCAPTCHA element to your website, you can always use our Custom Captcha Addon.
With this addon, you can define custom questions or use random math questions as CAPTCHA to fight spam form submissions.
Step 1: Create a Simple Contact Form in WordPress
The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step by step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Next, go to WPForms » Addons and find the Custom Captcha Addon.
Install and activate the Custom Captcha Addon.
Next, you’ll need to create a WordPress contact form. For help with this step, check out our tutorial on how to create a simple contact form in WordPress.
Step 2: Add and Customize the Captcha Form Field
Once you’ve created a contact form, stay in the form builder to add your custom captcha form field.
Just drag it from the left hand panel to the right hand panel to add it to your form. The form field will automatically display a random math question for site visitors to answer before they can submit their form on your site.
A new addition, subtraction, or multiplication problem will appear every time the page loads or refreshes.
For help customizing the Math Captcha, check out our documentation on how to change the Math Captcha.
To make changes to the form field, click on it.
Now you can change the label, type of captcha, and add a description.
If you prefer to use a custom question and answer instead of the Math Captcha, change the type of captcha to Question and Answer in the Field Options section.
There, you can also change the question and answer that site visitors have to answer to submit their form on your site.
If you want to display random questions and answers every time your page loads or refreshes, click on the plus (+) button to add another question and answer.
Click Save when you’ve customized your custom captcha.
You’re now ready to add your contact form to your website.
Step 3: Add Contact Form with Custom Captcha to WordPress
WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets.
Let’s take a look at the most common post/page embed option.
To start, create a new post or page in WordPress and then click on the Add WPForms icon inside of a block.
Next, select your form from the dropdown in the modal popup.
Then, publish your post or page so your contact form will appear on your website.
How to Build a Spam-Free Contact Form Without CAPTCHA
Here we’ll show you how to build a spam-free contact form in WordPress without CAPTCHA so the user experience is never disrupted and filling out your forms is as easy as possible.
Why Not Use CAPTCHA?
To protect your site, you want to make it as easy as you can for your visitors to fill in your contact form, while making it as hard as possible for spambots to get through your security.
One of the most common ways to stop spambots is to use a form field that only a human could answer, called CAPTCHA.
CAPTCHA usually requires users to enter specific text into a box.
Though our Custom CAPTCHA Addon works a bit differently by creating a field that asks a user to solve a simple math problem or answer a question correctly, this can still be an extra step that frustrates the user and may decrease form submission rates.
Users may not want to take the time to answer irrelevant questions. And, some users may have difficulty answering math questions or reading CAPTCHA text, especially if they have dyslexia or other disabilities.
Luckily, it’s easy to create a spam-free contact form without CAPTCHA using WPForms.
How to Add an Invisible Recaptcha Checkbox to Your Forms
Now, let’s see how to add an interactive reCAPTCHA box to your contact forms.
Step 1: Create a Simple Contact Form in WordPress
The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step by step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Next, you’ll need to create a WordPress contact form. For help with this step, check out our tutorial on how to create a simple contact form in WordPress.
Step 2: Configure reCAPTCHA Settings
Next, you need to configure reCAPTCHA settings within WordPress.
To start, go to WPForms » Settings. Then, click on the reCAPTCHA tab.
Choose Invisible reCAPTCHA to add Invisible reCAPTCHA to your contact form.
reCAPTCHA is a service provided by Google. It’s free, but requires a site key and secret key. You can easily generate those keys for your site by visiting Google’s reCAPTCHA setup page.
Once on the site, click on the Admin console button in the top right corner to continue.
You’ll be asked to sign in with your Google account. After logging in, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can register your site for reCAPTCHA.
If you’ve already registered a website for Google reCAPTCHA in the past, you’ll see a different screen. In that case, just click on the plus sign to Register a new site.
Enter the name of your website in the label field. This is for your own use, so that you can identify the website if you ever needed to get the keys again.
Then, choose the type of reCAPTCHA you want to add to your website. In this example, we’ll select Invisible reCAPTCHA badge.
After that you need to add your website’s domain, such as example.com.
To save your site, click the Submit button.
Next, you’ll see a page with a site key and secret key for your website.
Copy your site and secret key, and switch back to the WPForms » Settings page. Make sure Invisible reCAPTCHA v2 is selected for Type.Paste your site and secret keys under the reCAPTCHA settings.
Click on the Save Settings button to store your changes.
Step 3: Enable Invisible reCAPTCHA on Your Contact Form
To enable the Invisible reCAPTCHA on your contact form, go to Settings » General in the form editor.
Then, scroll down and click the Enable Google Invisible reCAPTCHA checkbox.
Click Save.
Now any time someone tries to submit a form on your website, Google will determine whether it’s a spambot trying to submit a fake form or not. Your users, however, will never see anything related to captcha and will simply submit their form without any issue.
Added Bonus: How to Enable Anti-spam Honeypot
There is a hidden way to secure your contact forms without using CAPTCHA of any kind in WPForms. This hidden tool is called a honeypot.
Basically, a spambot fills in a hidden field that valid users can’t see. This extra field of data verifies that the submitter is a spambot, not a user.
When the honeypot field is filled in, the form is rejected as spam. The spambot gets stuck and can’t submit the form.
Honeypots are great because they don’t bother users like a CAPTCHA field and they are a secure tool for stopping spambots.
By default, this setting is enabled for all your forms, even if you use other anti-spam strategies such as Google reCAPTCHA, the Custom Captcha addon, or Invisible CAPTCHA.
If you want to double check that it’s activated, you can go to Settings » General.
Then, near the bottom of the right-hand preview panel, you’ll see that the Enable anti-spam honeypot option is selected for you.
And there you have it! You now know how to build spam-free WordPress contact forms using Google Checkbox reCAPTCHA, Invisible reCAPTCHA, and our very own WPForms Custom Captcha addon. Plus, you know all about the anti-spam honeypot feature that all WPForms have.
Do you need to stop user registration spam? You might also want to check out our guide on simple tricks to eliminate spam user registration.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.
And don’t forget, if you like this article, then please follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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Do you get spam through your website contact form? Depending on how high-profile your company is, you can receive anywhere from a daily barrage to a slow trickle of spam. Though it’s nearly impossible to completely stop spam, we can take steps to reduce it. Here’s what we suggest.
Install a Contact Form
First and foremost, we recommend using a contact form instead of an email address. When you put your email address anywhere on your website, regardless of whether it’s a link or plain text, spambots will harvest it. You can obfuscate your email address to make it harder for spambots to find by using a plugin such as Email Address Encoder. However, it’s not likely to fool all spambots forever. Therefore, a contact form is a more effective option.
At OptimWise, our favorite contact form plugin for WordPress is Gravity Forms. It’s a premium plugin, meaning that it costs money, but it’s well worth it.
Video InstructionsEnable Anti-Spam Honeypot
The first step is to enable the anti-spam honeypot. According to Gravity Forms, the honeypot field is “a hidden field that tricks a spam bot into filling it out when it should really be left blank.”
Sometimes that’s enough to significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive. Wait a few days after enabling it. Then, if you’re still receiving too much spam, try the next step.
Add reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA is an improvement over standard CAPTCHA (where you need to figure out the letters and numbers in an image). That’s because reCAPTCHA is simpler for humans. According to Google (its developer), reCAPTCHA “uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive CAPTCHAs … while letting your valid users pass through with ease.”
It’s a bit more work to add reCAPTCHA to a form than to add a CAPTCHA. However, your site visitors will appreciate the comparative ease of reCAPTCHA.
Generate reCAPTCHA Keys
First, you need to generate your reCAPTCHA keys.
Add reCAPTCHA Keys to Website
Next, you need to add the reCAPTCHA keys to your website. Here’s how.
Add reCAPTCHA Field to Contact Form
Next, you need to add the reCAPTCHA field to your contact form. Follow these step-by-step instructions.
That’s usually enough to significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive. Wait a few days after enabling it. Then, if you’re still receiving too much spam, try the next step.
Increase reCAPTCHA security
By default, reCAPTCHA strikes a balance between security and user-friendliness. If you get too much spam, then increase the security. Here’s how you do it.
Spam Shields Up!
Another option is to use Akismet, a service from Automattic (the company behind WordPress). It integrates with many free and paid plugins, including Gravity Forms. Akismet is free for personal sites. There are paid plans for commercial sites.
As a business person, you have better things to do than fight spam coming through your website. Let OptimWise handle it for you. We provide comprehensive website maintenance. Sign up for your WordPress Maintenance Plan today.
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