Description
A CAPTCHA proves the sender is a human being. It does not stop a human being
whose job is to send sales pitches through other people’s contact forms. If you
run a small business in Japan, that is most of what arrives in your inbox.
Robse Form Guard reads each submission and scores its wording. Japanese
business-to-business sales boilerplate — 貴社, ご担当者様, と申します,
初期費用, 導入実績 and the like — is language a private customer asking about
your work simply does not use. When enough of it piles up in one message, the
submission is stopped.
Nothing is thrown away. Every blocked submission is emailed to you in full,
with the score and the words that matched, so that if the plugin gets it wrong
you still have the message. The visitor is shown a phone number or address you
choose, so a real customer caught by mistake can still reach you.
What it checks
- A honeypot. A field a person cannot see and a script fills in.
- A rate limit. Repeated submissions from one address in a short time.
- The wording. Each keyword carries points; the submission is stopped when
the total reaches the score you set. The starting list and every weight are
editable, and you can add your own words.
Try it before you trust it
Set it to watch only and it will email you what it would have blocked
while letting everything through. Run that for a week, look at what arrives,
then turn blocking on. This is the recommended way to start.
Which form plugins
- Contact Form 7
- Snow Monkey Forms
It sits alongside reCAPTCHA, Akismet or Turnstile rather than replacing them:
those stop machines, this stops people who are paid to write to you.
For Japanese sites
The keyword list is Japanese and the plugin is aimed at Japanese-language
sites. On a site in another language, replace the list with your own wording
under Settings.
Privacy
The plugin stores no personal data of its own and creates no database tables.
When a submission is stopped, its full contents are emailed to the address
configured on the settings screen, which defaults to the site’s own
administration email address. That email is sent by WordPress from the site
itself. No data is transmitted to the plugin author or to any third party, and
the plugin makes no outbound network requests.
The rate limit stores a hashed form of the submitting IP address in a
transient, which expires on its own within the window you configure.
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin.
- Go to Settings > Robse Form Guard.
- Fill in how a real customer can still reach you — a phone number is the
usual choice. Do not skip this: it is the only way out for someone the
plugin wrongly stops. - Leave watch only on for the first week and read the emails it sends you.
- Switch to block once the verdicts look right.
Rolling it out to many sites
These constants in wp-config.php win over the settings screen, so a
deployment script can configure a site without touching its database:
define( 'ROBSE_FORM_GUARD_TEL', '03-0000-0000' );
define( 'ROBSE_FORM_GUARD_QUARANTINE', 'you@example.com' );
define( 'ROBSE_FORM_GUARD_THRESHOLD', 4 );
FAQ
-
It blocked a real customer.
-
Read the email it sent you — it lists the words that matched and the score.
Either lower the points on the word that misfired, or raise the score needed
to match. Both are on the settings screen. -
Will it stop bots?
-
The honeypot will stop simple ones. For machine submissions in general, keep
reCAPTCHA, Turnstile or Akismet switched on as well. This plugin is aimed at
the sales messages a human being typed. -
Does it send my form data anywhere?
-
No. The only message it sends is the copy of a blocked submission, by email,
to the address you set on the settings screen — your own site’s administrator
address unless you change it. Nothing is sent to the plugin author or to any
other server. -
The blocked copies are filling my inbox.
-
That is the point of them, and you should read them for the first few weeks.
After that, filter the subject line into a folder rather than turning the
copies off — they are the only record of a submission that was wrongly
stopped. -
Can I use it on a site that is not in Japanese?
-
Yes, but the built-in list will not match anything. Replace it with the sales
boilerplate used in your language.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Robse Form Guard” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Robse Form Guard” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.1.1
- Removed the bundled Japanese translation files. Translations are handled by
translate.wordpress.org.
2.1.0
- First public release.
- Settings screen: mode, score, keyword list, honeypot, rate limit, quarantine
address and the contact route shown to blocked visitors. - Blocked submissions are emailed to the site’s own administrator by default.
- Watch-only mode for tuning before blocking.
2.0.0
- Contact Form 7 support alongside Snow Monkey Forms.
1.0.2
- Internal release for Snow Monkey Forms.