Creating forms on your website allows visitors to send you messages and registrations. Humans and non-human "bots" can access forms added to your website. Non-human programs automatically fill out forms and submit them to create spam messages. You can eliminate most spam by adding “reCAPTCHA” to your website. reCAPTCHA will verify that the submission process is done by a human, not an automated one. It does a great job of eliminating most of these unwanted submissions.

You can integrate reCAPTCHA on your forms to help prevent spam submissions. Signing up for a free account is easy, and the steps are simple to complete. When you have completed the integration with ReCaptcha, all of your public forms will contain the spam prevention check at the end of the form.

Note: reCAPTCHA is optional - BUT there are significant advantages to setting it up.

If you integrate reCAPTCHA on your website, your form's "Email Notification" people will receive an email containing the message from each submitted form. You can then reply to the email.

If you opt NOT to integrate reCAPTCHA, your form's "Email Notifications" will receive a note that a form submission has been made. An Administrator must then go to the website forms collection to view the submitted information. If you wish to respond, copy and paste the email address into your email program. You cannot respond directly in the list of form submissions.

Setup reCAPTCHA:

From the dark gray admin bar on the left side of your website, click "Settings" and then select "Integrations." On the new page, scroll down to see the reCAPTCHA box. Here, you will see the fields that will hold your reCAPTCHA keys.

Apply for a set of "keys" to integrate reCAPTCHA into your website: 
https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create

Note: You will need a Google email account, so if you don't already have one, pause and create one now at:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/56256?hl=en

  1. On the reCAPTCHA site, click the "Admin Console" link at the top right of the screen.
  2. Give your account a label. I use the domain name as my label, and it works well.
    Note: It is essential to distinguish each website's label from another since you can set up multiple website reCAPTCHAs on the same Google account. 
  3. Next, select the reCAPTCHA v3 option if it has not already been selected.
  4. Domains: You should add all the domain names associated with your website. If you are unsure what domain names are associated with your website, go to your website's "Settings" and select "Domains and Email." There, you will find a list of all associated domain names.
    Note: For this Google feature setup, the domain name should not include HTTP, HTTPS, or www.
    example correct domain name: mychurch.com
    incorrect example domain name: www.mychurch.com
    incorrect example domain name: https://mychurch.com
  5. Submit the form. You will see two alphanumeric keys on the screen - a Site Key and a Secret Key.
  6. Copy and Paste these keys into the fields 'Site Key' and 'Secret Key' on your website's integrations page.
  7. Save the integrations page. (you may have to scroll down to see the "Save" button on the bottom left.

Once you have added these keys and saved the page, all the forms your website currently has and will create in the future will be automatically protected with reCAPTCHA.

reCAPTCHA will stop automated (non-human) filling out of your forms, which is the most common reason for receiving emails with content that does not relate to your website. If a spam message does make it through, perhaps their message did not look to reCAPTCHA to be spam or possibly was filled out by a person paid to send spam as advertising messages. Spam blockers do not stop real people from submitting a form.