You just redesigned your site, or maybe just added a new contact form to your current site, and now you’re getting a bunch of non-sense emails. Contact form spam! A lot of people default to using a CAPTCHA to fight spam, those annoying puzzle image things you hate filling out. But there’s another way, a honeypot field!
A what?
A honeypot field is a form field that scripts don’t know they shouldn’t fill out, so they do, and in doing so reveal that they are in fact a script. The great thing is that actual users don’t see them and don’t have to do any extra work to contact you!
Let’s cover two of the more common form plugins, Contact Form 7 and Ninja Forms.
Contact Form 7
You’ll need another plugin for the honeypot field. Install and activate the Contact Form 7 Honeypot plugin.
Next, edit your contact form and add the honeypot short code. I usually add it next to one of the other fields and give it a name that sounds important, like age or recommendation.
[honeypot recommendation]
Save your form!
Ninja Forms
Make sure you’re plugin is updated. That’s it!
Ninja Forms includes a honey pot field on all forms now. If you have an Anti-Spam field setup, you can remove it from your form, unless you want extra protection from scripts.
This should be a nice balance of usability for your users and little spam for you!
Photo by freezelight CC v2
