![[Solved] CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA Not Working on WordPress Website](https://melapress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAPTCHA-or-ReCAPTCHA-not-working-on-WordPress_-X-Ways-to-Fix.png)
Is CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA not working on your WordPress website?
Common causes for CAPTCHA or ReCAPTCHA malfunction include
- Incorrect domain name and site key
- Cached data problems
- Plugin incompatibility issues
- Inappropriately high CAPTCHA score
In this article, we will show you how to find a solution for CAPTCHA not working on your WordPress website.
How to Fix CAPTCHA Not Working on WordPress
To fix malfunctioning CAPTCHAs on your website, you need to carry out the following steps. We recommend carrying out one step at a time and checking if the solution fixed the issue, before moving on to the next one.
IMPORTANT: Take a backup of your entire website because, in the following solutions, we will ask you to update software installed on your website or add new plugins to your site among other things.
Although rare, adding new plugins or making updates can sometimes cause websites to break. So a backup will be your safety net, ensuring you can recover your website in case something does go wrong.
While implementing the following solutions, if your website breaks, you can easily get it up and running using the backup and then proceed with the solutions again. So take a backup before moving forward with this tutorial.
1. Fix Incorrect Site, Secret Keys & Domain Name
When you set up reCAPTCHA on your WordPress site, you are required to register your domain with Google reCAPTCHA and obtain a Site Key. Incorrect domain names or key entries in your configuration can lead to reCAPTCHA not working.
Below, we’ll show you how to fix incorrect entries when using Google reCAPTCHA. Cloudflare Turnstile and hCAPTCHA users need to follow these tutorials instead:
Fix Incorrect Key Entries
To fix the incorrect key entries, open your Google reCAPTCHA dashboard, select your WordPress website from the dropdown menu, and open the Settings option.
Next, go to reCAPTCHA keys and copy the Site Key and the Secret Key.
Once you have the keys, open your WordPress dashboard, go to the CAPTCHA settings of your CAPTCHA plugin, and paste the copied site and secret keys. You can easily do this by clicking the Reconfigure CAPTCHA integration button when using CAPTCHA 4WP.
CAPTCHA 4WP is our very own WordPress CAPTCHA plugin, which we will be using throughout this tutorial. Keep in mind that you might be using a different CAPTCHA plugin and the steps might differ slightly.
Fix Incorrect Domain Name
Next, make sure you are using the correct domain name by returning to your Google reCAPTCHA account and scrolling down to the Domains section.
Here you need to ensure that the domain name is correct and that it does not include “https://” or the trailing slash (“/”) found at the end of a URL. The domain name should look like this:
example.comAfter ensuring you’re using the correct domain name, be sure to scroll down to the end of the page and hit the Save button. Then proceed to check your website CAPTCHA.
2. Ensure Requests Are Reaching the CAPTCHA Service Provider
For CAPTCHA to work, your WordPress website must be able to communicate with the CAPTCHA service provider. This is important since the tests are run on the service provider’s servers.
If your website requests are not reaching the CAPTCHA service provider correctly, due to network connectivity issues, firewall rules, hosting server down, etc, the CAPTCHA on your website won’t work.
To verify that the requests from a WordPress website are reaching the CAPTCHA service provider correctly, you can follow the steps below:
Check Your Hosting Server Status
You need to ensure that your hosting server is up and running.
When a visitor submits a form or logs into your WordPress website, the site needs to communicate with the CAPTCHA service provider (be it Google reCAPTCHA, hCAPTCHA, or Cloudflare Turnstile) to validate the user’s CAPTCHA response.
However, if your hosting server is down, it cannot connect with the external CAPTCHA service provider. This causes CAPTCHA validation failure even if the user correctly solves the CAPTCHA.
To check whether your hosting server is down you can use tools like Is It Down Right Now or Hosting Checker or simply reach out to your hosting support team and enquire.
Disable Firewall
Website firewalls offer security measures that inspect incoming traffic and prevent malicious traffic from accessing the website.
In some cases, firewalls may inadvertently block or interfere with connections between a WordPress website and an external CAPTCHA service.
Ensure traffic can flow through by checking whether the firewall is allowing traffic to the service provider’s IP addresses. You can also check the service provider console to see when the latest requests came through.
If requests are not coming through, this typically indicates a firewall or a network issue. Check your firewall log for any blocked outgoing requests. Next, try pinging the service provider server to ensure a good connection.
3. Adjust CAPTCHA Score
In Google reCAPTCHA V3, each visitor interaction with the CAPTCHA generates a score ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 based on user behavior.
A high score indicates a higher likelihood of the visitor being a bot and vice versa.
We recommend reviewing the score threshold set for reCAPTCHA v3 on your website. The score threshold may be set too high, causing genuine human users to be rejected.
You can adjust the CAPTCHA score using the CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA plugin installed on your website. Here’s what this would look like on CAPTCHA 4WP.
4. Clear Server Cache
Caching is the process of saving web pages, images, CSS, JavaScript, and other assets so that when someone revisits that same page, the web server can quickly retrieve the resources and display them on your screen. It helps reduce loading time and improve user experience.
A significant drawback of server caching, particularly in relation to CAPTCHAs, is that it may store and display outdated CAPTCHA challenges or validation tokens. This can lead to several issues like the display of expired CAPTCHA image that no longer matches the expected response. The cached version might contain old CAPTCHA scripts that are incompatible with the current validation process.
These caching-related problems can prevent your website visitors from successfully completing CAPTCHA verification.
So by clearing your server-side cache, you can ensure that the latest CAPTCHA challenges and validation processes are being served to your visitors.
Some hosting accounts offer cache management systems that can be accessed from the cPanel or the hosting’s custom panel. For example, NameCheap has LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager that can be used to flush server cache.
We recommend looking for a similar feature in your hosting account.
Another option is to exclude CAPTCHA from caching. This ensures that the script is loaded from the source every time rather than using a cached version.
5. Update Plugins, Themes & WordPress Core
In a WordPress website, CAPTCHAs are frequently implemented through plugins.
Plugin developers release updates to fix bugs and improve compatibility with the latest WordPress versions. Outdated CAPTCHA or ReCAPTCHA plugins have a higher risk of conflicting with other plugins or the WordPress core, leading to CAPTCHA malfunctions.
By updating the CAPTCHA plugin and other plugins installed on your website, you can ensure maximum compatibility and resolve conflicts that might be causing the CAPTCHA to fail.
As for themes, outdated themes can sometimes interfere with the functionality of CAPTCHA plugins.
Likewise, outdated WordPress core versions can also cause compatibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins.
When troubleshooting compatibility issues, you should immediately update the current theme and WordPress core.
6. Use Different Form Plugins
Despite setting up your CAPTCHA plugin correctly and updating your website, you might still encounter CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA problems due to incompatibilities with your form plugins.
There are several reasons why your form plugin might be incompatible with your CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA plugin.
For instance, CAPTCHA plugins are known to have trouble interacting with a form that’s inside a frame, also known as iframe. The use of iframes in a form plugin is often necessary for design and functionality-related purposes. But it could also prevent the CAPTCHA feature from working properly on a WordPress website.
AJAX validation issues are another common cause for incompatibilities between form and CAPTCHA plugins. AJAX technology allows websites to update parts of a page without refreshing the whole page, ensuring a smooth user experience.
Both form and CAPTCHA plugins may use AJAX to handle form submissions and CAPTCHA validations but in different ways. The AJAX validation process of the form may bypass or interfere with the standard CAPTCHA verification process, leading to issues with form submissions and CAPTCHA verifications.
So how will you know if your form plugin is incompatible with the CAPTCHA plugin installed on your website?
Try switching to a different form or CAPTCHA plugin to see if it resolves the compatibility issue. If your form is the main culprit, you need to seek help from the developers. Reputable developers offer one-to-one support that will help you get back up and running in no time at all.
7. Switch to a dedicated CAPTCHA Plugin
Switching to a dedicated CAPTCHA plugin might be a good idea as these tend to offer more features and better compatibility with different 3rd party plugins
While there are numerous CAPTCHA plugins out there, we recommend trying out our very own CAPTCHA 4WP plugin.
CAPTCHA 4WP is a powerful and user-friendly CAPTCHA plugin built for WordPress websites, WooCommerce, and multisite networks. It also offers out-of-the-box compatibility with many popular plugins such as Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, BuddyPress, and others
CAPTCHA 4WP also supports multiple CAPTCHA providers such as Google reCAPTCHA service, hCAPTCHA, and Cloudflare Turnstile.
The plugin offers Geoblocking capabilities and complete control over CAPTCHA settings including language, error message, colors, size, and location of the CAPTCHA badge, among other things.
With features like CAPTCHA display only for failed logins, CAPTCHA removal from specific pages, whitelisting IP address, disabling the CAPTCHA challenge for logged-in users, and professional support, CAPTCHA 4WP offers a comprehensive solution for securing your website and enhancing user interactions.
You can try the free version of the plugin or install the premium plugin right away.
Test Your CAPTCHA Plugin
After implementing the solutions we listed in the previous section, you need to ensure that the plugin works on the user side (i.e., visitors to your website).
CAPTCHA issues are known to create user-side problems like CAPTCHA failing to load, or loading very slowly, image or audio not displaying, CAPTCHA validation timeout, multiple CAPTCHA refreshes required, form submission failures, etc.
Most of these problems occur due to reasons like unstable internet connection, outdated browser versions, and extensions, proxy server or VPN issues, among other things.
To ensure a smooth user experience, offer clear instructions and links to troubleshooting help docs and video tutorials advising visitors to check internet connection stability, clear Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser cache, disable all browser extensions, disable VPN or proxy servers, and update Google Chrome or whatever browser they are using to prevent any interference with the CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA verification process.
By anticipating and addressing these potential user-side issues, you can help ensure that your CAPTCHA plugin functions reliably for all visitors of your website.
Conclusion
CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA are important tools to help protect a WordPress website against spam, fake registrations & fake orders.
When these tools stop functioning properly, your website becomes vulnerable to potential security threats.
To fix a malfunctioning CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA, you need to carry out steps like
- Fix incorrect domain name and site key
- Ensure website requests are reaching the CAPTCHA service provider
- Adjust inappropriately high CAPTCHA score
- Clear server cache
- Update plugins, themes, and WordPress score
- Use different form plugins
- Lastly, switch to a better CAPTCHA plugin
If you have any questions about reCAPTCHA or CAPTCHA not working on your WordPress website, let us know in the comment section below.
