Setting Up reCaptcha for Thrive Forms

Thrive Themes enables customers to use over 20 services through our API module and we also support a custom HTML integration, in case your preferred third-party service is not on our list. This article details the steps you need to take to use CAPTCHA on various API integrated forms.

Important!

The reCAPTCHA feature can only be used on forms that are using one of our API integration and not on forms that use a raw HTML form code.

There are two different types of reCAPTCHA versions that you can use.

If you choose reCAPTCHA v2, the visitor from your site will have to interact with the form, as this version verifies the requests using a challenge. So, to verify that whoever is completing the form is not a bot, user interaction will be demanded ( for example, the user will have to check the “I’m not a robot” checkbox”).

The other version, reCAPTCHA v3, however, will verify the requests using a score.

The score is based on interactions with your site and enables you to take appropriate action for your site.

Thus, if you use this version, the users will not have any interaction with the form, but instead, a script will run and calculate the score (1.0 is very likely a good interaction, 0.0 is very likely a bot). Based on this score, you can then take further action in the context of your site.

Find out more about this version here.

Create Your API Connection

This only works with API integration, so first, you need to create your API connection. To do that, click on the logo of your preferred mailing service in this article and follow the instructions in the video that will pop up.

Register site to use the reCAPTCHA​ API

​Thrive Themes integrates with the Google reCAPTCHA service, in two quick steps:

1. Go to the Google reCAPTCHA page and click on “Admin Console”:

2. In the “Register a new site” screen, fill in all of these fields:

  • a – Label: in this field, insert a label so that it will be easier for you to identify the site in the future;

  • b – reCAPTCHA type: choose one of the two available types: verify requests with a score, or with a challenge;

Note: Depending on which type of reCAPTCHA you choose here, the setup in the Thrive Dashboard will be different.

  • c – Domains: add the domain of your site here;

  • d – Owners: by default, the account you’re logged in to will show as the owner, but you can add a new email address if you wish;

  • e – Terms of Service checkbox: check this checkbox in order to agree to the Terms of Service;

  • f – Submit: after you’re done with the fields above, click on “Submit”.

Once you have completed the steps presented above and you have registered on the Google reCAPTCHA website, look for the “Site key” and the “Secret key” on the page to which you have been sent to. Below you can see an image of how that section looks on the Google website:

​Create the ReCAPTCHA connection

Once you have copied the keys from the Google website, as presented above, you can access your WordPress dashboard, and then go to your Thrive Dashboard > API Connections, click the “Manage Connections” button and then “Add new Connection”. From the app drop-down list, select “ReCaptcha”:

ReCAPTCHA v2

If you want to use the second version of reCAPTCHA, select “v2”:

You will then need to provide the ReCAPTCHA site and secret keys retrieved earlier. Enter the details and click “CONNECT”:

In the confirmation box, click on “DONE” to exit the box:

ReCAPTCHA v3

If you want to use the third version of reCAPTCHA, besides the site and secret keys retrieved earlier, you will also have to select v3 here:

As you can see, for this version, you will need to set up some more options:

The first option is the “Use browsing history to determine genuine traffic” option. As mentioned earlier, this version of reCAPTCHA will run a script on your site, in order to determine a certain score, and thus verify the visitors.

When this option is enabled, the reCaptcha scripts will run on all pages. If you disable it, then the reCaptcha scripts will only be available on pages that contain a form (and the reCaptcha feature is enabled).

To disable the option, click on this switch:

Reject score below

The score calculated by Google when the scripts run on the pages will return a value between 0 and 1. This can be interpreted as follows: 1 is very likely a good interaction, whereas 0 is very likely to be a bot.

You can choose to reject scores below a certain score. For that, simply drag this slider to set it to the desired value:

Then, enter the site key and secret key in these fields, and click on “Connect”:

In this case, too, you will see a success notification.


Note: The same keys will not work for different versions of reCAPTCHA. If you decide to switch from one version to the other one, you will have to regenerate the keys.


You can finally set up reCAPTCHA wherever you have Lead Generation forms, be it pages, posts, Landing Page templates, or live ones.

For example, let’s take a “Lead Generation” element and edit it while editing a page using Thrive Architect.

The “Lead Generation” options will appear in the left sidebar. First, you will have to connect the element to the service of your choice.

Please take a look at this article, to find out how to set up the “Lead Generation” element.

1. Add Captcha to Prevent Spam Signups

After you have completed the mandatory steps and you have connected the form to a service, you can add the reCaptcha system to your form.

In the left sidebar, click on the “Advanced” option:

Then, the “Advanced” section will expand. Click on the switch button next to the “Captcha spam prevention” option, to activate it:

2. Customize the Captcha form (available for reCAPTCHA v2)

If you are using version 2, then a field will be added to the form after ticking the checkbox which adds Captcha to your “Lead Generation” element.

Here, the users will have to check the “I’m not a robot” checkbox:

As this is an element provided by Google, the customization of the form is limited. The captcha form will become an element on its own.

In order to edit it, you will have to enter the “Edit Mode” of the “Lead Generation” element. For that, click on “Edit Form Elements”:

Then, select the “I’m not a robot” field by clicking on it, and some options will appear in the left sidebar:

Under the “Main Options” section, you will be able to choose a theme for the field (light/dark), the type (image/audio), and the size (normal/compact).

Click on all these fields, to open the dropdowns with all the available options for each setting.

Then, you can use the rest of the sections, to determine the Layout & Position of the field, as well as to add Borders & Corners or Shadows.

In case you have used a Contact Form Element on your website, you can make sure to prevent spam messages received through the form using the same method.

With all this information you can go on and set up a reCaptcha form on your website, remember only that, in order to do this, the reCaptcha integration must be set up, as seen above in this article.

I hope this article was useful for you. As always, the knowledge base is at your disposal, if you ever need more information about our products.

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