Magento – Add CAPTCHA to contact form

The Fontis reCAPTCHA extension for Magento is a great way of adding protection to the contact form you are provided for your e-commerce shop. Those familiar with reCAPTCHA will know that it isn’t the best captcha program available on the Internet as it is sometimes frustratingly difficult to read, and the soundbyte is a complete waste of time. However, the spam protection that it provides makes it very worthwhile. The steps to install it are simple:

1. Copy the extension key from: http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/1169 and paste it into Magento Connect Manager.

2.  Logout and then log back in to your Magento Admin panel. Go to System > Configuration > Recaptcha. Here you’ll find that you require an Public Key and Private Key.

3. You’ll now need to sign up for a reCAPTCHA account. You need to do this for each domain you want to add the captcha form to. Once done you’ll be provided with the Public and Private Key that you require, then you can simply copy and paste it into the fields in your Magento admin panel. You can now set the extension to ‘Enabled’.

4. You’ll find that your existing form on /contacts has been replaced by the Fontis one in:

app/design/frontend/default/default/fontis/recaptcha

5. You can choose between several different themes or customise your own which is a nice touch. As it’s open source, you can remove elements that you don’t want. For example if you don’t like the sound function you can completely remove it. You can find more information about the extension on the official Fontis extension page: http://www.fontis.com.au/magento/extension/recaptcha