[Plugin: Really Simple CAPTCHA] Tips for troubleshooting Really Simple Captcha issues

Resolved warwickp
(@warwickp)

14 years, 6 months ago

I have just completed a migration of a number of sites which use Really Simple Captcha, as part of Contact Form 7 and stand alone.

Some tips for troubleshooting issues (some of this is repetition from other posts) which took me a few minutes to figure out:

1) Really Simple Captcha works great on WP 2.8 series (tested up to 2.8.4 and today on 2.8.5). There have been numerous questions about this in the forums. Running 2.8 series WP is NOT the cause of your Really Simple Captcha plugins not working.

2) Seeing no images? Then:

2.1) Verify that PHP has GD support _and_ Freetype support compiled in. If not you are SOL until you enable this support and need to use a different CAPTCHA solution. Google for “compile PHP GD freetype” for tips on getting this setup working.

2.2) Go to Settings->Miscellaneous and check your upload path. If you have moved hosting providers, moved servers or moved deployment locations this path may not be correct anymore. Really Simple Captcha uses this path to create the images. Which leads to:

2.3) Verify that the web server user has permissions to _read and write_ to the directory wpcf7_captcha directly below your upload path mentioned above. This is where the images are stored.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

Takayuki Miyoshi
(@takayukister)

14 years, 6 months ago

@warwickp Thank you very much for the nice post!

fishingfool
(@fishingfool)

14 years, 5 months ago

Thank you warwickp!!!!!!!!!!

zorrocket
(@zorrocket)

14 years, 5 months ago

Thank you very much warwickp!

Your troubleshooting steps worked for me!

theseowizard
(@theseowizard)

14 years, 4 months ago

Hi
I checked your suggestions and I can get the CAPCHA to work on one form but it will not work on the others

I have re built all my forms and still only shows up on one form and they are all on different pages

Anyone have any ideas

chrisboggs
(@chrisboggs)

14 years, 4 months ago

The posts above are common examples of heavy-duty programmer types and varying grades of web neophytes not really making any real efforts to interface with one another.

The programmers(warwikp and takayukister:thnx for the software!) have given us the answers we asked for but not the answers we needed.

In warwikp’s 2.1) answer above he says to “Google for “compile PHP GD freetype””. Well doing this of course results in a list of even more incomprehensible technical information. If the general user were capable of understanding this sort of information no one would need the forums because we would all be accomplished sysadmins/programmers.

Most of us don’t run our own servers and therefore do not have even the faintest idea how to determine if GD support and Freetype support have been compiled in to our ISP’s co-lo box PHP builds. Perhaps we neophytes could take more time to write out an intelligible question and the guys that know the answers could be a less obscure in thier answers?

For example: If I do not compile my own PHP installs how might I generally go about determining if the correct support has been compiled in to my ISP’s version of PHP? I use Bluehost.com. Can I log into my cPanel, fire up myPHPAdmin and determine this information? Is there some other route to this info given that I am not a sysadmin?

Thanks for your patience!

zflat
(@zflat)

14 years, 3 months ago

To check if GD & FreeType was installed, I made a simple php file. It was named info.php and I put it at the top level directory of my web page. If I remember correctly, the entire file consisted of:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

When you go to that file (example: http://yoursite.com/info.php) it will display configuration information. I searched for GD and found that FreeType was also listed. I deleted the file afterwards since it gives information that I wouldn’t want the general public to be able to see.

I’m no expert and know nothing about GD or FreeType, but seeing them listed gave me confidence that they were installed for me. And sure enough, they were!

relaxedguy
(@relaxedguy)

14 years, 2 months ago

The lack of support for a recaptcha plugin really bothers me. Now I have to go find yet another contact form because the GD or FreeType situation is way too complicated. Please consider spending some time to work with Re-Captcha.

maybedog
(@maybedog)

14 years, 1 month ago

Thank you Zflat. That was incredibly helpful.

webmanlacom
(@webmanlacom)

13 years, 11 months ago

what do i do after i clicked “activate” in the plugins page ? nothing happened ….. where do i go to see it ?

johnakerson
(@johnakerson)

13 years, 7 months ago

Thank you very much Zflat. That ultra-simple PHP was very helpful for all of my domains.

tgrblogger
(@tgrblogger)

13 years, 7 months ago

I’ve upgraded to WP 3.0.1 and I’m having issues with the captcha image not displaying properly on the form (using latest plugins of Really Simple CAPTCHA & Contact Form 7). It shows a broken image, and when I view the source, it gives the correct URL to where the captcha image is stored. I have verified that it uses the upload path in settings->media, which is where it is located in the WP 3.0.1 admin dashboard, and that the folder permissions are set properly. I have also confirmed that both the gd library and freetype are compiled with my php install.

Are there any other conditions that may be causing this? Is the plugin simply not compatible with the current 3.x version of WordPress?