[Top] 132 Is your WordPress Recaptcha appearing as a Shortcode on Contact Form 7? Here’s why…

Is your WordPress Recaptcha appearing as a Shortcode on Contact Form 7? Here’s why…

by Sam Davis

If you have a WordPress website and you’re using Contact Form 7, you may have realised that your form is all of sudden showing a [recaptcha] shortcode. This is because there is an update to the Contact Form 7 plugin which now works in tandem with the latest version (V3) of Google’s Recaptcha, whereby the process is entirely invisible to the user.

Google’s Recaptcha service enables a website to detect abusive traffic on a submitted contact form without any user friction. It returns a “score” based on the interactions with your website and provides the owner more flexibility to take appropriate actions.

Often it might also result in the user needing to identify street signs, shop fronts, or traffic lights on a series of images.

Previously the “captcha” (which incidentally, stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) would contain a number of fuzzy characters which would need to be typed in by the user, or it would involve the ticking of a check-box. Often it might also result in the user needing to identify street signs, shop fronts, or traffic lights on a series of images too. However, with the new version of Recaptcha, this is no longer the case.

The form no longer requires ANY input from the user in terms of a mouse-click or a verification code, and all works behind the scenes! Therefore, if you’re using Contact Form 7 version 5.1 you can remove the shortcode from your form, as otherwise it will appear on your front end. The following video shows you how to remove it.

Similarly, if you’re having the “issue” whereby you are expecting to see some kind Captcha on your website and it is missing of course, this invariably this means that your website has already upgraded and some cheeky scamp has either removed the shortcode on your behalf, or… you never had it active in the first place!