Preventing Spam with CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is used to secure websites from spammers, hackers, and other invasive actors by preventing spamg bots from submitting forms.

Directories Pro supports 3 methods of implementing CAPTCHA on your site, which are:

• reCAPTCHA v3 - reCAPTCHA is a free service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA v3 allows you to verify if an interaction is legitimate without any user interaction.

• reCAPTCHA v2 (Checkbox) - An older version of Google reCAPTCHA service which shows an "I'm not a robot" checkbox that requires the user to click the checkbox indicating the user is not a robot.

• Really Simple Captcha - Uses the Really Simple Captcha plugin which requires the user to enter random characters to verify the user.

Setting up CAPTCHA

Follow the instructions below to set up CAPTCHA:

1. Go to the WordPress administration dashboard and click Directories in the admin sidebar.

2. Click the Settings tab, then the Frontend Submit sub-tab, and scroll down to Captcha Settings section and choose an API for Captcha API that you wish to use on your site.

   

3. Follow the instructions below depending on the API that you selected.

   reCAPTCHA v3

   

   • reCAPTCHA API site/secret key - Generate Google reCAPTCHA API keys for your site and enter them into the text fields. Make sure to select reCAPTCHA v3 as the type of reCAPTCHA when registering your site.

   • reCAPTCHA score threshold - Set the minimum score required to pass reCAPTCHA. If you are unsure, leave it to the default score (0.5). For more detail, see https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/v3#score.

   reCAPTCHA v2 (Checkbox)

   

   • reCAPTCHA API site/secret key - Generate Google reCAPTCHA API keys for your site enter them into the text fields. Make sure to select reCAPTCHA v2 ("I'm not a robot" Checkbox) as the type of reCAPTCHA when registering your site.

   • reCAPTCHA size - Select the display size of the CAPTCHA field.

     Normal:

     

     Compact:

     

   • reCAPTCHA type - Select the type of CAPTCHA to serve. Note that the challenge popup is displayed only when the user stays on the page for more than 5 minutes.

     Image:

     

     Audio:

     

   • reCAPTCHA theme - Select the color theme of the CAPTCHA field.

     Light:

     

     Dark:

     

   Really Simple Captcha

   

   • Text color - Select the color of text used in captcha image.

   • Background color - Select the background color of captcha image.

4. Press Save Changes.

Adding CAPTCHA to forms

Follow the steps below to add CAPTCHA to the listing submission form on the add listing page.

1. Login to your website if not yet logged in and go to the WordPress administration dashboard.

2. Click Directories in the admin sidebar.

3. Under the All Directories tab, click the gear icon in the row of the directory to edit.

4. Under the Content Types tab, click the dropdown button in the Listing (or Review or Claim) row and then click Manage Fields.

5. Click the green Add Element button with a plus sign at the bottom of the page.

   

6. In the popup window, click the Utility tab, hover over to the reCAPTCHA element and click.

   

7. Leave the settings as-is, and press the Add Element button at the bottom of the popup window to add the reCAPTCHA element.

Adding CAPTCHA to login/registration forms

If custom login/registration forms are enabled, CAPTCHA can also be added to those forms. See User Login/Registration and Guest Posts for more details.

Force disable CAPTCHA

If you have enabled CAPTCHA in your login form and for some reason CAPTCHA stopped working, and you are unable to login, you can add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file to force disable CAPTCHA:

define('DRTS_CAPTCHA_DISABLE', true);

Make sure to add the line to wp-config.php above where it says:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */