I’ve finally released version 1.0 of CFFormProtect, my spam bot protection project. This new release has a couple of minor bug fixes, and I’ve added a feature to inform the Akismet guys if a form submission was spam but Akismet didn’t mark it as spam.For more information, and to download CFFormProtect, head over to the RIAForge project page.Background info: CFFormProtect is an open source project that I started and maintain. It allows you to have spam protection for your web forms, and it is all completely invisible to your users. That means, no hard to read CAPTCHA images, and no moderation queue. This works because CFFormProtect has a series of tests that a form submission has to pass before it will be posted to your site. These tests are:
- Check for mouse movement
- Check for keyboard usage
- Check the time it took to fill out the form (both an upper and lower limit are imposed)
- Check a hidden form field to make sure it’s empty (spam bots usually fill in all fields)
- Send form contents to Akismet for validation
On my blog, I have had 0 spam posts get through since I installed CFFormProtect. But if you don’t believe me, check out Sammy Larbi’s experience.