WP-Mix

Sick of teh spamz? Here’s an easy way to block a lot of automated spam from your contact form.

In this mini-tutorial, we use a hidden form field to catch and block automated spammers and bots. It’s quite effective.

Step 1: HTML

Include this snippet in your contact form:

<label for="humans" class="humans">Human check: Leave this field empty</label>
<input type="text" name="humans" id="humans" class="humans" />

Step 2: CSS

Now let’s hide the field with some CSS:

.humans { display: none; }

Step 3: PHP

Everything is setup, now to catch the non-humans in the PHP script used to process the contact form, like so:

if(!empty($_POST['humans'])) {
	// it's spam
} else {
	// it's human
}

More form-related security techniques:

• PHP securing email scripts
• Spamless email links with PHP and jQuery