securing the contact us page - captcha

[leehack]

Cider drinking kites?

[TraceyHand]

something very strange going on there, D

I can't even get to your test contact page from the test site

trouble at t' mill

[Darren B]

Thanks Lee

So you seen it aswell? it is another site i host on the same server, well something i started for someone and am still waiting for them to decide what to do with it

D

[Darren B]

OK we are doing a full refresh this time, lets see if that fixes it?

Evening Miss Bumps

[TraceyHand]

evening Darren

ermm..you didn't see me...I'm not really here

*looks around, all shifty-like*

[fergusw]

The cider page has been made in Frontpage *spit*!

Your contact us page however does show the captcha, but if you submit without entering anything it takes you
http://www.emailmeform.com/fid.php?formid=27447

away from the site, which is not very helpful. Perhaps some "OnSubmit();return false" javascript type code on the form to stop it being submitted until all the correct data has been entered might be better here?

[Darren B]

Evening Fergus, i know it was a quick page i did a while ago, but why it appears in my test area on another domain is anyones guess, because the index you see is not the one in the folder on the server.

Anyway, the form is processed by someone else, try it an you will see what happens, use your email address and it will reply to you aswell

D

[Darren B]

OK site refreshed finished, so if someone could take a look again

D

[fergusw]

Looks a bit happier, apart from being take to someone else's page if you do not enter all the fields correctly.

If you enter all the fields correctly then it works quote nicely from a users persepctive.

I would still look to introduce some Javascript client side validation to make sure that they HAD to enter data into all the correct fields BEFORE submitting the form. This would prevent them seeing this "other site page", unless of course their captcha was wrong.

Also, taking them back to a :
"Thank you for submitting your email. We will recieve and process this shortly. Please feel free to take up this offer of 70% off one of our most popular traction kites....."
page would go a long way for useability. Most people hate clicking on a contact us for only to be taken to some unrelated page with no user feedback on the success of their last action.

[Darren B]

Thanks Fergus, not sure about the 70% off

But i decided to try something, and now i have the basis maybe i can look at implementing the captcha on mysite, and have complete responsibilty. But i tried messing with a couple today but the way actinic loads the standard contact us pages via the cgi bin caused things to go wrong. Therefore i started with this, now i have the template, then have a go at code i really dont understand

D

[fergusw]

FYI - not tried implementing yet into Actinic, however the idea is really nice.

Help stop SPAM and assist with the digitisation of books.
http://recaptcha.net/
There is plenty of documentation for all web technologies. I'm sure it would not be too difficult to integrate into Actinic's MailForm.pl script.

[wesleythorne]

well actinic it is now 2010 and no sign of an inbuilt captcha system to secure the contact us form.

why has nothing happened ? do you not take security seriously

This is another long overdue feature that has been on the wish list for years and years

correct me if i am wrong

wes

[brucet]

One of many, unfortunately. Our wish list runs to hundreds of items, more than we can possibly fulfil. I will add your request to the counter for this one.

[graphicz]

Recaptcha is almost mandatory these days and for a designer who comes to this through design and not through computer geekdom I find the whole recaptcha implementation thing a very long way from intuitive. Customers are demanding it. It must be a priority for Actinic to implement it now? Prepare for awkward questions in Richmond!!!!!

[Darren B]

One of many, unfortunately. Our wish list runs to hundreds of items, more than we can possibly fulfil. I will add your request to the counter for this one.

I understand that you have many items on the wish list, but this is three years down the road and is a standard feature for just about every contact us form around these days.