Contact form being an integral part of WordPress websites are vital for businesses having a way for their website visitors to reach out to them… Contact forms help generate leads and know about visitor enquiries and make you reachable to your audience 24/7.
There is a possibility that your WordPress contact forms are not secure. It is essential to keep them secure. Let us further elaborate on this.
According to an Analysis by Sucuri, WordPress is the most infected CMS by hackers, and so are the WordPress forms. It is essential to have secure web forms on your website to protect the data of your site visitors and prevent hackers from installing malicious code into your website.
Knowing the importance of a secure form, the next step to ponder is to think of ways to make your online form safe and spam-free.
How to Make Your WordPress Forms Secure with Pie Forms
WordPress comes with a number of contact form plugins offering multiple features. But not all the plugins provide the same level of security and service. Therefore, it is important to choose your contact form plugin wisely on the basis of the various security features the plugin offers.
With the below-given features of Pie Forms, you can add an extra layer of security to your forms to keep the data safe and reduce spam.
- Block Users
- Form Validation
- Full Spam Protection
- Limit Form Entries From A Device
- Secure File Upload Forms
- Limit Form Submissions
- Unique Submission
1. Block Users
There can be several reasons for blocking users from your website. The most important is when you are tired of bots and trolls bogging down your website. You can eliminate spam and protect your website by instantly blocking them.
Using the block user feature of Pie Forms, you can block them in three ways:
- By username
- By email address
- By IP address
Check this guide How to block users using Pie Forms for more details.
2. Form Validation
Forms can be validated in two ways:
Server-side validation
Server-side scripting languages are used, such as ASP.NET and PHP
Client-side validation
The browser-side scripting language is used, such as JavaScript.
The client-side validation is used for a better user experience but it provides no actual security. It cannot protect your application from hostile bot attacks if the user turns off the JavaScript. This also means the doors are then open for spammers.
But Pie Forms comes with server-side validation for extra secure submissions of forms. So even if the user blocks the JavaScript, you are in the safe zone!
3. Full Spam Protection
There is no generic way to identify the actual human or bot while submitting the forms, but by adding several security features like Google ReCaptcha, it becomes easy to distinguish. It is one of the best ways to keep automated spammers away from your site.
Pie Forms has some powerful Captcha Support, including:
reCaptcha v2 and v3
Pie Forms supports both v2 and v3 of Google reCaptcha. ReCaptcha v2 comes with a check box asking I am not a robot, whereas v3 is invisible.
If you wish to learn more, you can read How to integrate Google reCaptcha in Pie Forms.
hCaptcha
Pie Forms supports hCaptcha in the forms for spam protection for its Premium Users. It is one of the best alternatives for Google reCaptcha and keeps your website secure from bots.hCaptcha comes in different languages, which are supported by Pie Forms.
HoneyPot
HoneyPot has been around for decades. It is a computer system used to detect attacks.
Pie Forms comes with built-in HoneyPot protection. It is an invisible field in the forms and provides protection to your forms from the bots. If the field is not empty on the form submission, it is filled by a bot.
Ensure to secure your forms by enabling these features for spam protection.
4. Limit Form Entries From A Device
Duplicate form entries are annoying, and you may prevent them from avoiding spam. You can verify unique submissions by allowing one submission per IP address.
Pie Forms premium users can use this feature to limit the number of form entries to avoid spam.
5. Secure File Upload Forms
File uploads are sometimes required for business processes and are helpful for many reasons. But what if hackers use them to inject harmful content on your website, which can put you in trouble?
For secure uploads in Pie Forms, you can restrict the file extensions and the file size in MBs to protect it from hackers. The user can upload multiple files, which you can limit by restricting the maximum number.
6. Limit Form Submissions
Limit Form Submission can be helpful when you want to limit the number of entries for any contest or job application or restrict the number of guests for an event or more. This is another way to keep your forms secure from unwanted entries.
With Pie Forms Limit form submission, you can limit the number of form submissions per form and display a custom message once the form entries have reached their maximum limit.
The remaining number of forms are displayed to the user on the front end, creating a sense of urgency.
7. Unique Submissions
Unique Form Submission helps to prevent your respondents from making multiple submissions in a form. It helps to keep your forms secure from unwanted multiple entries.
With Pie Form’s Unique Submission checkbox you can limit people to just one form submission per email address.
WRAP UP
That’s it! Now you know why contact forms are essential and how to create secure forms for your website.
Are you ready to build one for your WordPress website? If you are still using Pie Forms basic version, get started today by upgrading to Pie Forms premium to enjoy all the features to make your forms extra safe, or Contact Us for further queries.
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