How to protect a website from bots, what is captcha and how to install it on a website

Currently, any tool can be used not only by a living person, but also by robots created by him. Robots are being introduced everywhere, they are designed to facilitate and simplify the execution of routine tasks. Websites were not left unaffected either. Robots or bots actively visit various sites and collect the necessary information on them, as well as perform all sorts of actions.

Protecting your site from bots

There are many ways to how to protect your site from bots - from simple protection of forms to completely blocking bots from visiting the site. It is difficult to completely ban bots from visiting the site, but it is still possible to develop a protection module that will analyze the behavior and calculate many bots. If the behavior is questionable, you can offer the visitor to take a test that determines who he is - a human or a robot.

What is captcha

But most sites do not use full protection against bots, but only form protection. After all, it is the forms that are often filled out by bots and their protection is required. The standard way to protect forms for quite some time has been to install captcha on the site. What is captcha ? This is the test that anyone who tries to fill out the form will need to pass. It allows you to determine whether a person or a robot is filling out the form.

An important question - which captcha to choose for the site ? Captcha can be as simple as complex - provide different levels of security. Consider the popular options:

• you can make a simple captcha yourself - place a check mark under the form, a question with multiple answers, ask to solve a simple mathematical equation, etc .;
• create invisible fields in the form , which should be left blank - if they are filled, most likely it was done by a robot;
• use third-party services , often used - reCAPTCHA from Google. It doesn't take long to install it on your site, but it's important to set it up correctly - you need to follow the Google installation instructions for this.

How to install captcha on the site

Now the most important thing, how to install captcha on the site ? It all depends on the type of captcha chosen - the installation process may differ for each type. Sometimes you can use a ready-made module for CMS, which will embed captcha in all forms of the site automatically, all that remains is to manage the settings through the interface. But such modules may not be available for all CMS and sites, because sites can be developed without using them. In addition, modules may not provide the desired type of captcha.

Therefore, it is best to do a manual installation of the selected CAPTCHA. To do this, you need to inject the code into the form itself, get keys in the service for signing forms, and also configure a script that accepts data from the form . The easiest way to entrust this work to an experienced specialist is to order the installation of captcha on the site .

So, it is possible to protect the site from bots - it all depends on the budget of the site owner, whether he is ready to spend money on high-quality protection of his site. Self-directed installing protection may not be so effective , especially if it is incorrectly installed and configured. It was also discussed - what is a captcha , which captcha to choose and how to install it correctly on your site.