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I have been trying to get the ReCaptcha feature for the past two days and it is now driving me crazy.

I have read the FAQ and gone through the forum, but nothing seems to work. When I followed the FAQ and changed image/png to text/html and viewed the chrono_verification.php in the web browser I got a completely blank page.

I have of course enabled the plugin and also set "Use Image verification" to yes from Anti-Spam Captcha Settings. On this page it is reported that:

GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
FreeType Support Yes
PNG Support Yes
But the sample image is completely blank.

I have also installed separately the ReCaptch plug-in. But, although this worked well independently of ChronoForms, it broke ChronoForms completely. Even the Forms Management page was not displayed properly. I have also tried to change the order of the plug-in without any effect. The only way how I was able to get ChronoForms working again is by renaming the file chrono_verification.php. But the forms with {ReCaptcha} were still not displaying at all (completely blank page). Once I uninstall this plug-in at least ChronoForms works again, but we are back to square one - no Captcha symbols are shown.

The tmp and the components folders both have writeable rights.

I have now ran out of options and don't know what else I could try. I really need this feature, and I have already created a number of forms using ChronoForms and I don't wish to waste the invested time in getting to learn this and designing these forms.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Hi,
The chrono_verification.php file, as well as all settings on the Anti Spam tab, is only related to the built-in captcha, and has nothing to do with the ReCaptcha CFPlugin. Especially, if you are using ReCaptcha, make sure you have NOT enabled the image verification on the Anti Spam tab.

You say you installed an external ReCaptcha Plugin? Are we talking of a ChronoForms plugin (CFPlugin), or a Joomla plugin/mambot? If we're talking of ChronoForms, there should already be a ReCaptcha CFPlugin included with the installation. If not, which plugin would this be?

/Fredrik

Fredrik thanks for your reply. That was my initial impression as well, but when I saw that it was not working, I tried to install a separate plug-in. The one that I installed is the one at http://code.google.com/p/joomla-recaptcha/. I have tried to enable and disable the image verification on the Anti Spam tab with this plug-in installed. But both produced negative results.

How do you check that there is a ChronoForms ReCaptcha plugin installed? It is not listed under the Joomla plug-ins page. And how do you install this plugin? I couldn't find it on the chronoengine website. Or maybe it comes with the installation file by default? In which case it is still not working. I only installed the joomla-recaptcha when things did not work.

When I renamed the file chrono_verification.php (is this the ChronoForms plugin?) the link "ReCaptcha verification" disappeared from under the Plugins list under Forms Manager so I suppose that the ChronoForms plugin was actually installed.

So this still does not answer why the ReCaptcha image is not showing even with just the ChronoForms plugin installed.

Sorry if this sounds confusing, but I only started to use Joomla three days ago.

Victor

Hi,
In the Forms Manager, there's a set of links to the left, listing the various ChronoForm Plugins (CFPlugins) that are available. One of these should be the ReCaptcha cfplugin (that comes with ChronoForms, not the one you installed later on). Check the box for the form you'd like to configure ReCaptcha with, and then click the link. You'll then be able to configure the plugin for this form.

Once setup properly, save, and open the form in the normal form editor. Add the {ReCaptcha} placeholder if you havn't already done so, move on to the plugins tab, and enable the recaptcha plugin in the list (green bar with a red cross means enabled, lots of people get these confused). Then head over to the Anti Spam tab, and disable image verification. Save

Then see if your form loads properly, and if the ReCaptcha works.

The chrono_verification.php file is not a Joomla plugin, and not a ChronoForms plugin, but part of the built-in image verification ("normal captcha"). It merely generates a random string, stores it in the session storage, and draws an image containing that string.
The ReCaptcha CFPlugin is located under com_chronocontact/plugins/ and named cf_recaptcha.php. It is included with the latest versions of ChronoForms, so there is no need to download it separately, or install it manually.

/Fredrik

Fredrik that is very clear. So much so that I managed to get it working! At last I understood that there are two methods to get Captcha images - the first using {imageverification} and which is available from the wizard, which doesn't seem to work in my case (that is still a mystery). If one is to use this, presumaby one needs to enable this from the anti-spam options.

The second method using {recaptcha} is also available from within ChronoForms (this is where I got it wrong, because I thought you need a separate plugin for this). And this is where you need to disable the captcha image from the anti-spam options and enable the plugin (is the plugin required to be disabled in the first case?).

I had the image incorrectly formatted but I solved that from the forum.

The only pending issue that I still have is that if I install the plugin from http://code.google.com/p/joomla-recaptcha/. in order to protect from spam the contact list (this is separate from ChronoForms) this would break ChronoForms (no forms are displayed for the users).

Thank you once again.

Victor

Hi Victor,
Good to hear you got the forms working, atleast. For the system plugin, it's hard to tell. Try setting Error reporting in the site config to maximum, and see if you get any information on the white page.

/Fredrik