|
When customers register for an account on your store, they are required to fill out a CAPTCHA field to verify their entry. Some merchants have asked if this CAPTCHA field could be removed.
While it is possible to remove the CAPTCHA verification form the registration page, it is not recommended to do so for a variety of reasons.
Why do I need CAPTCHA?
CAPTCHA is an acronym that stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" and it is intended to protect website forms by creating a test of sorts that can be passed by human visitors, but not by computer programs such as bots and spiders.
To pass this test, a human visitor will be shown an image containing a series of letters and/or numbers or perhaps words, and they are asked to enter this information into a field. When entered correctly, the test is passed (they're verifed as human) and they are allowed to proceed with submitting the form on the page. In contrast, a computer program like a bot would only see that there is an image being shown, but not the contents of the image, so it would not be able to pass the test.
So what? Why should I care if a bot is accessing the form?
Bots are most often identified with search engine indexing. However this is only one action that a bot can be programmed to perform. Some malicious bots can be programmed to take a form and submit to it hundreds or thousands of times in just a few seconds. This results in the bot spamming the recipient of the form data with each submission.
The registration page itself contains a form on it, so we add CAPTCHA to prevent bots from using it in this fashion and effectively spamming the store owner with fruitless customer "registrations."
Fine, but I don't like the default CAPTCHA. Is there an alternative?
Yes. If you would like to try an alternative to Shift4Shop's default CAPTCHA, then Google's ReCAPTCHA might be more suitable for you. It's included in all Shift4Shop accounts, and basically replaces the standard CAPTCHA from your pages. Click here to learn how to set ReCAPTCHA up.
Eh, I'll take my chances with the bots. How do I remove CAPTCHA from the registration page?
While we certainly don't recommend it, here's how you would remove CAPTCHA from the registration page.
- Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager
- Using the left hand navigation menu, go to Settings >Design >Themes & Styles
- Once there, look to the top right of the page and click on the "Edit Template (HTML)" button
This will take you to your store's theme folder which will contain a list of HTML template files that are unique to your selected theme. You will always see a file labeled "frame.html" and possibly some other files in the list. Look within this list for a file called "registration_0.html"
If you do not have this file in your theme folder, proceed to the next steps. However, if you do have this file in your theme folder, skip ahead to step 6.
- Look at the top right section of the page and click on the "Go to folder:" drop down menu
- Select the templates/common-html5 folder
This file will contain every HTML template files used on Shift4Shop. The files will be listed alphabetically, so search and locate the file named "registration_0.html" and proceed with the following steps.
- Once you've located the "registration_0.html" file, click on its name to view the file in the Template Editor
- Using CTRL-F on your browser, search for <h3>[registration_verification]</h3>
Searching for this phrase in the HTML will take you to the following block of code
<div class="header"> <h3>[registration_verification]</h3> </div> <!--START: captcha-> <div class="loginField"> <label for="randomWord">[registration_verification]:</label> <div class="captcha"><img src="admin/image_pw.asp" width="148" /> <div class="captcha-text">[registration_verification_message]</div> <input type="text" name="randomWord" id="randomWord" autocomplete="off" value="" size="25" maxlength="30" tabindex="15" class="txtBoxStyle" /> </div> <div class="clear"></div> </div> <!--END: captcha->
- Remove this entire block of code
- Next, use your browser's CTRL-F function to search for "required error"
This phrase search will take you to the following snippet of code:
<div class="required error"><div class="error-img"><img src="assets/templates/common/images/error2.gif" width="12" height="12" alt="" /></div> = Required</div>
- Remove this snippet of code also
- Next, use your browser's CTRL-F function to search for "randomword"
This search will show you the following snippet of code
if (objForm.randomWord && objForm.randomWord.value.trim() == "")
strMsg += " - Please enter the [registration_verification*script].\n";
- Remove this snippet of code as well.
- Click "Save" at the top right of the page to set your changes.
Your store's customer registration page is now rid of CAPTCHA.
Note If you are using ReCAPTCHA, you will want to make sure it is turned off on your store to avoid any possible errors when the CAPTCHA blocks are removed from the registration page.
|