Today @TonyChester linked to an article titled Should We Kill the Captcha? Of course we should. Captchas are a nuisance, generally difficult to decipher and there are other ways to avoid spam comments on your blog. This is especially true with ExpressionEngine.

The article linked above provides several screenshots of bad captchas that are impossible to make it. I too whent to a site that I know using recaptcha and immediately came across this:

Clearly this is impossible to get right. Once could click the reload button, but some people may not even know it is posisble to reload the captcha. Besides that is also completely user unfriendly and in my case usually results in me leaving the page in question, never to return.

Alternative Ideas

The article then goes on to suggest alternative ideas including the trivia question, random image question and simple image question. Searching Devot:ee for Captcha brings up 21 results. Only one of those provides one of the alternative ideas proposed, which is the trivia question, Accessible Captcha. I've used Accessible Captcha on many ExpressionEngine sites including one of my blogs Repatriate Me.

However, since that blog was implemented there are new and better resources for avoiding captcha's available for ExpressionEngine powered sites. Two of the best, both of which I've used on client sites, are Hon-ee Pot Captcha and Snaptcha. Both of these addons use invisible captchas which mean that us humans have no extra steps to register, leave a comment, or submit a form of any kind. The result is a much more user friendly experience for your site visitors.

Since implementing Hon-ee Pot and Snaptcha I have recieved very few spam comments on any web site that I administer. I would highly recommend that any ExpressionEngine developer use these to avoid spam and help their users have an enjoyable experience on your site.

Kill the Captcha!

Alternative Ideas