Product Update: Captchas Now Required for Anonymous Comments, Edits

Tuesday, September 22, 2009  

EditMe's Captcha feature is now turned on automatically for registrations, comments and page edits by users who are not logged in. Previously, site owners could disable captchas for public comments and page edits. This change was necessary to block automated spam scripts from flooding these sites with spam edits and comments.

The "Exempt Authenticated Users" option is still available in the Site Security settings and is on by default, so that users who have successfully logged in do not have to complete a captcha test. Administrator users are never prompted with a captcha test.

Captchas are images with an obfuscated word that a user must type in to prove they are human. They are an effective barrier to automated spammer scripts that attempt to flood unprotected sites with links in an attempt to increase search engine rankings.

Registration Form Help

A small change to the Registration Form Help feature, which allows administrators to display a custom message at the top of their site's Registration form, has been change to required Administrator View / Administrator Edit security on the RegistrationFormHelp page. This change provides additional protected against unwanted changes to the site's Registration page. See the wiki for details on this feature.