http://oliveridesign.com/destroy-contact-form-spam/ Web - Print - Multimedia Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:16:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 http://oliveridesign.com/destroy-contact-form-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-5 admin Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:44:29 +0000 http://oliveridesign.com/?p=45#comment-5 Thank you so much for the comment Jason! I like your approach and I will try this soon for a couple different reasons. One of the main reasons, like you said, is from time to time people have a hard time reading captchas. Another reason would be that one less field for someone to fill out the better. Lets face it, as marketers (usually just one of most site owner's hats) we really want it to be nice and easy for a user to fill out a contact form, opt in form, or any other form of interaction through our website. The worst thing that could possibly happen in a situation like this is a web user finding it difficult to read the captcha and getting discouraged to the point that they leave your web site without completing your form. To me it would make more sense to just get rid of the captcha and the spam. Again, thank you for the comment and idea Jason. I am glad you liked my review and I agree with you...if you need a quick and easy spam fix ReCaptcha is the way to go. Talk to you later! Thank you so much for the comment Jason! I like your approach and I will try this soon for a couple different reasons. One of the main reasons, like you said, is from time to time people have a hard time reading captchas. Another reason would be that one less field for someone to fill out the better. Lets face it, as marketers (usually just one of most site owner’s hats) we really want it to be nice and easy for a user to fill out a contact form, opt in form, or any other form of interaction through our website. The worst thing that could possibly happen in a situation like this is a web user finding it difficult to read the captcha and getting discouraged to the point that they leave your web site without completing your form. To me it would make more sense to just get rid of the captcha and the spam. Again, thank you for the comment and idea Jason. I am glad you liked my review and I agree with you…if you need a quick and easy spam fix ReCaptcha is the way to go. Talk to you later!

]]> http://oliveridesign.com/destroy-contact-form-spam/comment-page-1/#comment-4 jason Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:57:34 +0000 http://oliveridesign.com/?p=45#comment-4 We've had a contact form on one of our clients sites that averages over 10,000 visits a month and gets zero spam messages using another technique other than ReCaptcha. Some people don't like using a captcha, and some find they are too hard to read. A smartly configured php file(eliminating one time zone that bots use and no humans inhabit, google it) works just as well, it sends them to a "dead" page or one telling the user they need to change there zone because no one lives in that time zone, unless its done manually (which would defeat the purpose of a captcha in the first place) Forums for example are prone to spam, and by eliminating that zone it virtually stops all spam. If your afraid a user might have his/her computer set to that zone, a simple drop-down menu asking them if they are human with the default set to "no" works just as well instead of sending them to a dead page or eliminating the time zone. By keeping the default set to "no" bots automatically leave it the way it is because they don't know how to handle it. We had a serious spam problem in one of our forums and we went against a captcha and went with this and it stopped the spam cold, with none to this day(3 years later). This also works for contact forms. For a quick easy fix ReCaptcha is the way to go. Nice review by the way. We have used ReCaptcha before and it works great. We’ve had a contact form on one of our clients sites that averages over 10,000 visits a month and gets zero spam messages using another technique other than ReCaptcha. Some people don’t like using a captcha, and some find they are too hard to read. A smartly configured php file(eliminating one time zone that bots use and no humans inhabit, google it) works just as well, it sends them to a “dead” page or one telling the user they need to change there zone because no one lives in that time zone, unless its done manually (which would defeat the purpose of a captcha in the first place) Forums for example are prone to spam, and by eliminating that zone it virtually stops all spam. If your afraid a user might have his/her computer set to that zone, a simple drop-down menu asking them if they are human with the default set to “no” works just as well instead of sending them to a dead page or eliminating the time zone. By keeping the default set to “no” bots automatically leave it the way it is because they don’t know how to handle it. We had a serious spam problem in one of our forums and we went against a captcha and went with this and it stopped the spam cold, with none to this day(3 years later). This also works for contact forms. For a quick easy fix ReCaptcha is the way to go. Nice review by the way. We have used ReCaptcha before and it works great.

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