Make Contact Forms Useful Again

I like to use contact forms on websites because I think forms encourage users to respond more often than a simple mailto: link. The problem with forms is that they’re abused by spambots. The form I have on w8pgw.org, for example, is spammed so often, I’d say that the ratio of spam to real messages is easily 100:1.

Fortunately, there are a couple of things you can do. One of them is to use Captcha. Basically what you do is to create a small image that contains a code consisting of letters and numbers that is human-readable, but not computer readable. The person using the form must enter that code properly for the form to be processed. There are many PHP Captcha implementations on the Net, so it’s relatively to set up and use.

One drawback is that it makes the form bigger. This could be a problem when you want to keep the form small.

One idea that was just floated on the Drupal support mailing list is to add a drop-down menu to a form and require the user to make a selection other than the default. The reasoning behind this is that the spambots aren’t smart enough–at least not yet–to actually make a selection.

I’ve just implemented this on w8pgw.org and am hoping that this works. It’s certainly simpler than adding a Captcha.