How To Actually Integrate Contact Form 7 And Google reCAPTCHA V2

Contact Form 7 is one of the most used contact form plugins on Wordpress. If you work with Wordpress, chances are you've set up or worked Contact Form 7 before. And as will any contact forms on the internet, you open yourself to receiving spam enquiries (mostly from sexed crazed Russians bots wanting to sell you viagra). 

What is reCAPTCHA?

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response used to differentiate between users and spambots on websites. These pieces of code pose questions or requests actions for users to execute, which are not easy for bots to bypass. By making use of the captcha mechanism, we can differentiate between humans and abusive bot traffic.

reCAPTCHA is google's version of a CAPTCHA program with of course a little more something. In addition to providing the CAPTCHA, they offer an interactive analytics dashboard to help you track and flag abusive traffic on your site. reCAPTCHA is also a free service, and because they backed by Google, the software is always adapting and updating to deal with current abusive activities, giving you peace of mind only legit users are let through into your conversion funnels.

How to successfully integrate reCAPTCHA V2 into Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 provides some documentation on their site with regards to integrating reCAPTCHA V2. However, some steps are missing to get this to work. At this stage, the plugin is geared towards integrating reCAPTCHA V3 by default. I still prefer using reCAPTCHA V2 as it seems to be more compatible with Wordpress. Here's a solution that works. 

1. Register your site on Google reCAPTCHA

1. Register your site on Google reCAPTCHA here
2. Choose V2 in setup.
3. Grab the site key and secret key from the settings. 

2. Setup reCAPTCHA for Contact Form 7

Open Up your Wordpress Dashboard

1. Head to plugins and install and activate the ReCaptcha v2 for Contact Form 7 plugin. 
2. From the  admin panel select Contact > Integration
3. Find reCAPTCHA panel and click Configure Keys.
4. Copy the site key and secret key into the fields and save them.
5. Select Contact > reCaptcha Version from the admin panel.
6. On the “ReCaptcha v2 for Contact Form 7” settings page, select from the select list “reCaptcha Version 2” and click “save.
7. Go to your contact forms and add the reCATCHA shortcode (i.e.[recaptcha]) to your forms, just before the submit button.

And just like that, your task is done, and your forms are now spam-proof!

How did this fix work for you?

What did you think of this article, helpful or not so helpful? We'd love to hear from you, so let us know what you thought in the comments or share any other Contact Form 7 tips the nichemarket community might find helpful.

Contact us

If you are having trouble setting up the contact forms on your website, contact us here, and we'll be happy to assist. 

Are you looking to promote your business?

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If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile 
• How to create a nichemarket business listing 

Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to improve your skills, here are some related posts on all things. Contact Form 7, reCAPTCHA and Wordpress.

• Track Contact Form 7 Conversions via Google Analytics in 2 Minutes
• Improve Your Conversion Rate & User Engagement With reCAPTCHA V3
• How To Use The Classic Editor After Upgrading To WordPress 5
• Resolve vcruntime140.dll error on WAMP in 2 minutes
  
• Quickly Resolve WP-VCD Malware Attack on Wordpress

Sources:

• Header image: www.freepik.com

Tags: contact form 7, wordpress, recaptcha