How to Use Captcha with Joomla 2.5

February 26, 2012 | Joomla Tutorials | Written by Steve Burge

One of the downsides to using popular software such as Joomla, WordPress or Drupal is that lots of spammers know how to target that software. For example, it is not unusual to get a lot of spam registrations on your site.

Joomla 2.5 introduced a new Captcha feature that helps reduce spam registrations. Users will see text that they have to type in before Joomla will accept their registration.

By default the Joomla registration form looks like the image below and has no protection against spam:

Be aware that Captcha is a good spam-fighting solution but far from perfect. Wikipedia has a list of ways that Captchas can be circumvented and also explains how it can cause trouble for users with poor eyesight.

Here's how to set up Captcha on your Joomla 2.5 site.

Go to Extensions > Plugin Manager and find the Captcha - ReCaptcha plugin.

Open up this the Captcha - ReCaptcha plugin and you'll see two fields on the right-hand side labelled Public Key and Private Key.

To fill in those details, we need to visit Go to http://www.google.com/recaptcha/.

Click Sign Up Now!
Enter your domain name.
Check the box saying Enable this key on all domains (global key) if you want to use Captcha on multiple sites.
You'll now be shown your Public Key and Private Key as in the image below.

Copy-and-paste those keys into your plugin options:

Click Save & Close.
Go to User > User Manager > Options.
Choose Captcha - ReCaptcha as your option in the Captcha field.
Click Save & Close.

Now when you visit the registration form for your site, Captcha will be enabled.

If the white design doesn't match your site's template, you can go back the plugin's options and change the theme for the Captcha. The images below show some of the other options:

Comments

#1 lakshit 2012-03-05 11:47

how to use is in my component????

#2 chuks 2012-03-07 08:38

I can't find this plugin on joomla 1.7

#3 AussieMike 2012-03-07 10:59

Quoting lakshit:

how to use is in my component????

Yes, very good question. If it there for Joomla core it should also be available for components.

Regards
Mike

#4 F K Jewel 2012-03-11 09:51

It was really a nice guideline. Thanks.

#5 Dori Beeler 2012-04-28 20:26

How about this - I have disabled this feature (client wanted something different) and I cant get the generic warning message on the page to go away:
"Captcha plugin not set or not found. Please contact a site administrator".
I followed all the above steps in reverse... no joy... can you advise what I might be doing wrong?

#6 suhas 2012-05-15 06:17

how to use captcha in contact form 7, i read u ar article but still i need step by step how to use

#7 andja 2012-05-16 22:00

what about joomla??? where is this user-user manager..? can't find it... :(

#8 eddie 2012-07-10 15:41

Over 70% from our club members says they cant read the words

#9 Werry 2012-08-08 17:13

I have followed all the steps to enable Captcha - Recaptcha but my captcha still is not visible on my contact us page. Can you assist to advise what else may have caused such error and how to rectify?

Thanks in advance.

#10 lindsay 2012-08-19 19:10

If you can't see the words look at the three icons to the right of the input box. The top one presents new words; The middle one changes to an audio version; The bottom one tells you how to do the above...

#11 Lori 2012-08-23 04:14

I had it on my site & took it off. It was too hard for people to read. I personally tried about 10 times to log in and couldn't. There's no way a user would try that many times. Makes me wonder how many potential customers I lost? I saw another one called Nucaptcha where the letters were plainly written but wiggled back & forth. I was thinking about trying that instead.

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