Add hCaptcha to your Form

hCaptcha can protect your forms from bots, spam, and other forms of automated abuse. hCaptcha is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA that pays website owners while preserving user privacy by protecting user privacy, rewarding websites, and helping companies get their data labeled

hCaptcha is easy to be used, provides a variety of styles, supports both checkbox and invisible modes, and you can configure it with just a few steps.

• Generate hCaptcha Keys
• Add Checkbox hCaptcha to Joomla Forms
• Add Invisible hCaptcha to Joomla Forms
• Why you probably don’t need hCaptcha

Generate hCaptcha Keys

To generate the required keys, you will have to login into your hCaptcha account by visiting the link: https://dashboard.hcaptcha.com/overview

Login with either Github, Google, your own credentials or if you do not have an account, you can click on "Sign up" to create one.

After logging in, you will have to click on the Sites button on the top right of the page and then on Add Site.

You will be redirected to a page where you can enter your site's information and get your key.

1. Enter your site's name.
2. Enter your site's hostname.
3. Select the hCaptcha mode. (Note: Passive and 99.9% Passive modes are only available to hCaptcha Pro users)
4. Select the challenge difficulty.
5. Click on the Save button.

Your Site Key is ready! You can find it in the Sites page and copy it by clicking on it.

Get your Secret key.

Apart from the Site Key you just created, you also need the Secret key to enable the service.

To get your Secret key, click on your profile icon at the top right of your dashboard and then on Settings. You will be redirected to the Secrets page where you can click on Generate New Secret to get your account's Secret Key. The key will be presented only once so make sure to copy it.

Add Checkbox hCaptcha to Joomla Forms

The checkbox version requires the user to click a checkbox indicating the user is not a robot. This will challenge the user to validate whether or not they are human.

Add Checkbox hCaptcha Field to your form

In Joomla administration environment click on Global Configuration -> Convert Forms and click on the "hCaptcha" tab.

Here is where your keys must be placed. Fill in both "Site key" and "Secret key" fields using the corresponding keys that hCaptcha has provided you. 

Next, go to the main administration menu: Components -> Convert Forms -> Forms.

And choose the form you want to edit.

Choose the tab "Add Field" and click on the hCaptcha field in the Advanced Fields category. Save your work.

Subsequently, more options about appearance are given where you can optionally choose the hCaptcha type, theme, and size in the respective field options.

hCaptcha comes with the Light and Dark themes and in a Normal and Compact size as you can see in the screenshot below:

Finally, after all the changes save your work. Your hCaptcha field is ready!

Add Invisible hCaptcha to Joomla Forms

The invisible hCaptcha does not require the user to click on a checkbox, instead it will display a challenge to the user when a user submits your form.

The Site Key and Secret Key can be generated via the above guide by clicking here.

Add Invisible hCaptcha Field to your form

Follow the steps listed here to add your hCaptcha to your form.

You should now select "Invisible" under the "Type" setting.

Finally, after all the changes save your work. Your hCaptcha Invisible field is ready!

Why you probably don’t need hCaptcha

Without you having to do a thing, Convert Forms is already protecting your forms from spam submissions. A honeypot field is automatically added to each form by default. It's designed to catch spammers in the same way an actual pot of honey would catch flies. It's just a hidden field placed into every form and it's purpose is to make form submission fail if anything is entered into it.

Read more here: Native Convert Forms Anti-spam Protection with Honeypot

Tips:

• Don’t forget to store your keys.