How to Upload a Custom Captcha Box on WordPress Feedback

I recently wrote an article about how to combine CloudFlare Turnstile into wordpress feedback and ran the code right here on WPExplorer. On the other hand, I think using Turnstile is overkill and loading other scripts just slows down the web page loading. So, I decided to code my own custom captcha field and use the Remark Blocklist to see if I can prevent observation SPAM without any third-party dependencies.

In this article I will provide the code sought as a way to load a conventional captcha field into the wordpress survey form. Specifically a field called “What 12 months are these?”. Optimistically bots are not smart enough to answer the question.

So, to upload custom fields into your wordpress comment form, you will be able to connect to comment_form_defaults clear out. This clear out returns an array of observation form fields to which you can add new ones. The clear out will work with any blocking and antiquity issues.

Here’s a snippet of code that provides a brand new field called “What year is it?”:

/**
 * Supplies a "What 12 months is it?" field to the wordpress Comments.
 *
 * @link https://www.wpexplorer.com/how-to-add-custom-captcha-wordpress-comments/
 */
function wpexplorer_add_captcha_comment_field( $fields ) {
	$fields['captcha'] = sprintf(
		'',
		sprintf(
			'%s %s',
			__( 'What 12 months is it?', 'text_domain' ),
			wp_required_field_indicator()
		),
		''
	);
	return $fields;
}
add_filter( 'comment_form_default_fields', 'wpexplorer_add_captcha_comment_field' );

If you need to update your website, you should see the new field added to your comment form. If you don’t, your website is not using the main wordpress comment form and you will also need to determine if your theme or a plugin is causing the issues.

With the custom captcha field in place, the next step is to validate the input when a comment is submitted. We can hook into the pre_comment_on_post motion hook to execute any code faster than wordpress posts a comment.

This is the code I use to validate the custom captcha field:

/**
 * Hook into "pre_comment_on_post" to verify our custom captcha.
 *
 * @link https://www.wpexplorer.com/how-to-add-custom-captcha-wordpress-comments/
 */
function wpexplorer_verify_comment_captcha() {
	if ( empty( $_POST['captcha'] ) || (int) date( 'Y' ) !== (int) sanitize_text_field( wp_unslash( $_POST['captcha'] ) ) ) {
		wp_die(
			'
' . __( 'Captcha Error: Do you not know what 12 months it is?', 'text_domain' ) . '
',
			__( 'Observation Submission Failure' ),
			[
				'response'  => 200,
				'back_link' => true,
			]
		);
	}
}
add_filter( 'pre_comment_on_post', 'wpexplorer_verify_comment_captcha' );

This code will verify that our captcha field has a price and that the price is equal to the prevailing 12 months as returned by using PHP date() function. If neither evaluation passes, we stop executing the use of the wp_die() function and display of the message relatively.

Conclusion

As you can see, adding a conventional captcha field to your wordpress comments can be really simple. It only requires a couple of features. Products and services like Akismet are expensive, and most free anti-spam plugins are bloated or require third-party services and products like reCaptcha.

I will try using this traditional captcha field on the website and see how it works. If the website helps to continue to receive observation spam, I might be able to try switching to a honeypot field.

Let me know in the comments how you prevent SPAM from appearing or otherwise on your website and be sure to try out our list of the best possible anti-spam plugins for wordpress.

The feedback on how to upload a custom Captcha box on wordpress got its first impression on WPExplorer.

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