Hello world 👋 my name is Francisco, fcoterroba on the Internet and today I’m bringing you a post that’s going to combine everything with everything. I’m going to explain what forms are, captcha, how they’re made and how to add a captcha to them. This same thing we’re going to see in our famous, beloved and favorite CMS, WordPress ❗
You should know that all this, and much more are in a post I uploaded more than a month ago, where I explain many of the most used computer terms in our daily lives. Since, in this post, you’ll see words that probably won’t sound familiar to you. 🤯 You can read the post here.
Before we begin, I also want to remind you that a few weeks ago I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel, very interesting, focused on home automation. Specifically, we connected, configured, and installed a smart light bulb 💡 with which you can change its color, turn it off, turn it on, and much more simply by using your mobile phone and/or voice assistants like Google, Alexa, etc. 👇🏻
WHAT IS A FORM?
A form is a document, (although in our world it’s digital) that serves mainly as an approach between clients and companies, or rather between users and developers.
Specifically, I (and probably 100% of the pages you visit) have a section on the web that is exclusively that, a page with a contact form. Try it if you want!
It doesn’t have much more history so, let’s start with the WordPress part 👇
FORM WITHOUT CAPTCHA
As I already told you in my previous post about WordPress, in WordPress there are an infinite number of plugins for absolutely any problem you can think of, and if not, you can always program it! 👨💻
And for something as basic as a form, there are an infinity²
That’s why, I’m going to give you several of them and I’m going to teach you to install one of them, specifically the one I use:
- WPForms -> It’s probably the simplest plugin for making forms. You just have to drag and drop. But, it has quite a few limitations until you buy some of the premium plans.
- 10Web -> It’s similar to the previous one since it seeks maximum simplicity for WordPress users. It also works with the drag and drop theme.
And, the one I use, Contact Form 7. Probably, the simplest, minimalist and at the same time complete plugin in the entire store.
It allows adjusting each and every one of the parameters that the form contains, the SMTP server, file upload, etc.
To install this plugin, we must write its name in Plugins > Add new and finally install.
When the plugin has been installed, in our left sidebar a new section called ✉Contact will appear. We’ll open that section and create a new one.
On the main screen we’ll enter a title to identify that form (in case we want to have more than one different one.
Then, we’ll set the fields we’ll ask the user for. Above where you write, we have buttons that will automatically add fields to fill in.
WATCH OUT👀, the required fields will be those in which it will be impossible for the user to send the message if they don’t have anything written.
In the next section we’ll be able to write how we want that email to reach us.
Also, at the end, in email (2) it offers us the possibility that the user receives an email automatically when they send their email to us.
Finally, (since the additional settings won’t be of great importance to us) we’ll have the messages that will appear to the user when they click on the form submit button.
ADD CAPTCHA TO OUR FORM
First of all, maybe you’re wondering what a captcha is. Well, pay attention 🦜
Weaponhealth Captcha or simply CAPTCHA are the acronyms for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. They are challenge-response tests controlled by machines (no type of maintenance or human intervention is necessary for their realization, and it’s implemented on a computer) that are used to determine when the user is a human or an automatic program (bot).
WikiPedia and its ambiguous explanations 🙄. Captcha, after all is a small automated program capable of, according to a series of tests or artificial intelligence, with the mere fact of detecting when a user is a user and when a robot is a robot.
If you have a website or application that allows some type of contact (registration, login, etc.), be sure that your inbox will end up filling with spam trying to sell you porn. 🤣
That’s why, we’re going to install a captcha to our newly made form 👨🍳.
Just like before, WordPress, having a bunch of plugins and a very large community behind it, has hundreds of plugins to insert a captcha in our form. That said, we’ll always have to look for one that’s compatible with our form plugin. That, is what’s really complicated.
That’s why, I prefer to use Google’s reCaptcha for some simple reasons briefly explained in this video here 👇
Now yes, let’s get to action 🧨
First, let’s go to Google’s official website to register a new reCaptcha. We write an identifying name in the label, choose the reCaptcha version, write the domain we want that captcha to affect and send the option.
Then we go to Contact > Integration > reCaptcha and write our corresponding secret key and site key
And with this that would be everything for today, guys, I hope you liked it and it was of great use to you! 🤓 We’ll see each other very soon here and you already know you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 🤟🏻