IDK if that plugin offers a CAPTCHA option but I know that the cForms plugin does.
Hi there!
I did some searching and found out that Contact Form 7 supposedly offers 3 different ways to help stop spam – Akismet (I definitely recommend), CAPTCHA (if it is text-only and not based on images, that is okay, but CAPTCHA isn’t always accessibility friendly), and quizzes.
Does your Contact Form 7 have these features and do you have any (or all) of those features enabled?
Akismet in particular is pretty powerful when it comes to figuring out what spam is and isn’t. The addition of a text-only CAPTCHA (eg: Is fire hot or cold?) can then eliminate the spammers that are people and aren’t bots (automated spamming methods).
Another simple way to avoid bots is to have at least two required fields. The more required fields you have, the less likely that a bot will successfully submit the form.
@ SS_Minnow:
I agree with that sentiment, but most bots nowadays are smart enough to fill out forms that have BOTH the required fields AND some forms of CAPTCHA.
I’ve been battling it out against a slew of porno and illegal drugs bots myself in regards to my comments.
Akismet catches them all, but it gets tedious sorting through it all to make sure no legit ones get caught.
Thanks to you both!!
I’m not sure which form it is. At the top it reads Contact For 7, with a picture of two sheets of paper, but below it reads contact 1. Which one is it?? Does that make a difference? At any rate, I do have Akismet, but not sure if it’s active-how do I tell? I remember that I had a feature that required users to input a code, but my designer said it was causing problems with submissions and removed it.
I have two fields required (name and email).
Go into your admin Plugins menu and see what you have active. The name of the plugin will be there. The name of the plugin and the name of your form are two different things.
Go into the plugin’s settings and enable the CAPTCHA option if you have not already done that.
I see “Really Simple CAPTCHA” and it shows “deactivate” and “edit”. Does that mean I already have it activated?
Does that mean I already have it activated?
yes it does
to really stop bots you need a plugin built for that
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bad-behavior/
and to stop comment bots
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cookies-for-comments/
Thanks Samboll. I’m not that advanced to add things to my site for fear I’ll totally destroy something, but thanks again.
We have activated akismet on our form and tested it with “viagra-test-123″ as name of the sender (as advised on plugin homepage). It works, but if you enter random letters as Name or E-mail (what bot that is bugging us is doing) it passes as legit.
