What makes spam submission hard to get rid of is how the attackers use automated bots to infiltrate the forms. This can hinder your lead generation, making it hard to convert your visitors into loyal visitors. Fortunately, you can still build a spam-free WordPress contact forms. This will help you increase the quality of your lead generation.
This post will be going to guide you through the process of adding reCAPTCHA to your WordPress forms, creating a spam-free contact form without using CAPTCHA, and how to use the WPForms Custom Captcha addon. When done reading this article, you will have yourself a spam-free contact form in your WordPress that will help you generate numerous quality leads.
Table of Contents
Adding reCAPTCHA to Your Contact Forms
We will start by creating a contact form with an interactive reCAPTCHA. The reCAPTCHA section is meant for visitors to prove they’re human by clicking on it when submitting a form.
Benefits of reCAPTCHA
Block spam – Since reCAPTCHA allows visitors to identify themselves as humans when submitting a form, all attempts by automated spam bots are blocked. The visitor will trust your firm due to the added security layer and will not abandon the form.
Easy to use – CAPTCHA was created to fight spam and help machines translate non-digital books. However, visitors found it hard to answer the jumbled up text correctly. To simplify the process, Google introduced reCAPTCHA v2 to make it easier for users to verify themselves as humans. Visitors have put their mouse over the Checkbox for the tool to establish that he or she is not a spam bot.
reCAPTCHA v3 was released by Google in 2018 and detected abusive traffic on your website using a behind-the-scenes scoring system that doesn’t prompt the visitor for any action. reCAPTCHA v2, on the other hand, offers two options as the visitor attempts to fill the contact form. They include invisible reCAPTCHA and interactive checkboxes.
The following guide elaborates on how to add invisible reCAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA v2’s interactive checkboxes to your WordPress forms:
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Creating a Simple Contact Form in WordPress
WPForms is a plugin, and the first thing you need to do before using any plugin is to install and activate it in your WordPress. After that, comes the creation of a contact form.
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Configuring Settings in reCAPTCHA
The next step is to configure reCAPTCHA settings in WordPress, and you can do this by heading WPForms » Settings » reCAPTCHA tab. Since we are trying to add an interactive reCAPTCHA box to your contact form, select v2 reCAPTCHA. Although Google freely provides reCAPTCHA, it requires a site key and secret key to start using it on your WordPress website. To generate these keys, head over to Google’s reCAPTCHA setup page. Click on the Admin Console in the top right once you set up this page.
You will need to sign in, and once you are done, you will be directed to a page that allows you to register your site for reCAPTCHA. Those who have already registered for Google reCAPTCHA will be provided with a different screen. Click on the plus sign to register for a new site if you see this page. You will need to fill in your website’s name in the label field. This will be helpful to you when you are trying to identify the website if you need the keys again.
Once you are through doing this, it is time to pick the type of reCAPTCHA you want to add to your website. We are using reCAPTCHA v2 in this guide, so go ahead and pick it. You will also need to check the “I’m not a robot” Checkbox. Once you are done adding your website’s domain, you need to save your site by clicking on the Submit button.
You will be provided with a secret key and site key in the next click. Just copy your site and secret key, and head back to the WPForms » Settings page. Once you are on this page, under the reCAPTCHA settings, paste your site and secret keys. To store your changes, click on the Save Settings button.
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Adding reCAPTCHA to Your Contact Form
This step is pretty easy, and all that is needed is to enable reCAPTCHA in the simple contact form you created earlier, and you can do this by going to Settings » and in the form editor clock on General. You will be required to check the box next to Enable Google Checkbox v2 reCAPTCHA at the bottom of the page. After that, click on the Save button. You now have a green light to add your contact form in your WordPress site that has a Google reCAPTCHA.
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Adding Contact Form with reCAPTCHA to WordPress
The beauty of using WPForms is how it allows you to add your contact form to various locations on your site. You can add it to your blog posts, pages, and sidebar widgets. In this guide, we are going to use the most common option, which is the post/page embed option.
To initiate this, start by creating a new post or page in WordPress and click on the Add WPForms icon inside a block. Once you are through with that, the dropdown in the modal popup will allow you to select your form. Your form will appear on your website once you publish your post or page. To add an icon with detailed information to a form field, read tutorials on how to add Tooltips in WordPress forms.
Using the WPForms Custom Captcha Addon
You may want to add an interactive reCAPTCHA element to your site, but you don’t want to use Google reCAPTCHA. This is done using a Custom Captcha Addon. This addon allows you to fight spam form submissions using random math questions or define custom questions as CAPTCHA.
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Create a Simple Contact Form
You will start by installing and activating the WPForms plugin. The next step is to head over to WPForms » Addons » Custom Captcha Addon. Install the Custom Captcha Addon and activate it. After that, go ahead and create a WordPress contact form.
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Adding and Customizing the Captcha Form Field
Don’t leave the form builder once you have created the contact form as you will still need to add your custom captcha form field. This is done by simply dragging it from the left-hand panel to the right-hand panel. Your site visitors will need to answer random math questions answer before submitting their forms on your site. Every time page loads or refreshes, new math problems that require visitors to add, subtract, or multiply figures will appear.
You can change the form field by clicking on it. This allows you to change the label, type of captcha, and add a description. You can easily change the Math Captcha to a custom question and answer if you prefer that. Just change the type of capture to Question and Answer in the Field Options section. This section also allows you to change the type of question and answer to be answered by your visitors before submitting their forms on your site. If you are satisfied with the changes made, click on the Save button to apply.
Conclusion
There you go. I hope that this guide will come as handy to you, and you now know what reCAPTCHA is and how it can help you get rid of spam contact forms on your WordPress website. Although there are many plugins to help you do this, WPForms is the best of them all.
Here are a few more topics that you shouldn’t miss:
WP Mail SMTP by WPForms
5 Popular Free & Paid Form Builder Plugins for WordPress
How to Preview and Submit a WordPress Form
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