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Google’s reCAPTCHA is a great tool to use to help verify legitimate email senders so you stop receiving bot generated unsolicited email messages such as unwanted advertising, phishing scams and malware. reCAPTCHA is now available in EverWeb 3.0!

How Does reCAPTCHA Work?

Google’s reCAPTHA tool works by using advanced risk analysis techniques to tell humans and bots apart.

Why Does EverWeb Use reCAPTCHA v2 and Not v3?

reCAPTCHA is available in two versions: Version 2 and Version 3. Both versions are fully supported by Google. EverWeb uses reCAPTCHA version 2 as reCAPTCHA version 3 is a power user tool that for most purposes is not suitable for use most websites.

Setting Up The Contact Form in EverWeb

You may want to start by adding the Contact Form Advanced widget to your page in your website project if you have not done so already. Customize the form as you want. Note that when you add reCAPTCHA to your contact form that it will be placed after your Form Controls and before your ‘Submit’ button. You cannot change the alignment of reCAPTCHA in the form or the fonts that it uses.

Setting Up Google reCAPTCHA

There are two ways in which you can set reCAPTCHA. You can go directly to the Google reCAPTCHA website or you can use the ‘Sign Up for reCaptcha v2’ button in the Widget Settings tab of the Contact Form Advanced widget.

1. On the home page of the reCAPTCHA website, click on the ‘Admin Console’ button.
2. If you are not already logged in to your Google account, you will be asked to sign in. If you do not have a Google account, you can create one from this screen. If you do not see a ‘Create Account’ link, click on ‘Use Another Account’ and then select ‘Create Account‘.
3. Once you have logged in to your Google account, you will be taken to an overview screen of your sites that are currently using reCAPTCHA.
4. Click on the ‘+’ button to register a new website for use with reCAPTCHA.
5. Complete the ‘Label’ field. Enter a label that is easy for you to identify which website this is for.
6. For the ‘reCAPTCHA’ type, click on the ‘reCAPTCHA v2’ radio button.
7. You have three options to choose from. It is recommended that you use the ‘I’m not a robot’ Checkbox.
8. In the Domains section, enter the URL of your website to the right of the ‘+’ button e.g. www.mywebsite.com.
9. As you are already logged in to your Google account, you probably will not need to add a new Owner unless you want others to be able to access and administer the website’s reCaptcha.
10. Check the field to Accept the Terms of Service then click on Submit to finish.
11. If you have filled in the form correctly, the Site Key and Secret Key will be created.
12. Copy and paste each key, using the Copy key in reCAPTCH, in to the relevant field in the SPAM Protection fields of the Contact Form Advanced widget in EverWeb.
13. The Contact Form Advanced widget will update and you should see ‘I’m a Robot’ in the reCAPTCHA dialog box in the contact form.
14. Once you have finished, you can preview the page, to see the reCAPTCHA working. If you find that the reCAPTCHA does not work in Preview, publish your website to test that it works correctly.

Troubleshooting reCAPTCHA

Usually you will know if there is a problem with the reCAPTCHA as you will see error messages in the reCAPTCHA dialog box in the Contact Form Advanced widget in the Editor Window. Here are a few troubleshooting tips:

1. Wait a little while. Sometimes it take a little time for the reCAPTCHA to update. This may mean that initially you see an incorrect message when nothing is actually wrong. It’s just slow to update.
2. Check that your contact form is set up properly. It is always a good idea to make sure that your contact form is working correctly. Uncheck the ‘Use reCaptcha SPAM Protection’ field, then publish and test your form. When you submit the form you should receive an email of the completed form. If not, you may need to troubleshoot your form before looking at the reCAPTCHA.
3. Re-paste the Site and Secret Keys. Sometimes you need to repast the keys again in to the contact form. When doing so, delete the contents of the reCaptcha Site Key and Secret Key completely in the Contact Form. Always use the Copy command from reCAPTCHA to copy the keys. This is the best way as they keys are very long, so you want to make sure they are copied and pasted properly.
4. Regenerate the reCAPTCHA keys. Sometimes you just have to regenerate the keys in reCAPTCHA then re-copy and re-paste them in to the contact form.

Video Walkthrough

You can follow our video Contact Form SPAM Protection in EverWeb which takes you through the setup of reCAPTCHA in EverWeb.

If you have any question on this blog post, please let us know in the Comments Section. We happy to help!

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