Contents
Spam protection - Plugixa FAQ
Where this appears: Settings, then the Captcha tab.
Two things on the front end accept input from anybody: the submission form and the feedback vote. Both can be protected by Cloudflare Turnstile.
Turnstile, not reCAPTCHA
Turnstile is invisible in the normal case: no pictures of traffic lights, no puzzle. Most visitors never know it ran.
The reCAPTCHA settings are gone. Older versions used reCAPTCHA v3 and older documentation described setting it up. Those option keys are kept in the database so that upgrading does not lose them, but nothing reads them and no reCAPTCHA code path exists. If you are following an old guide, stop.
Setting it up
Get a site key and a secret key from the Cloudflare dashboard, for the domain the form is on. Paste both into the Captcha tab and turn on whichever actions you want protected: the submission form, the feedback vote, or both.
It fails closed
A missing token, an unverifiable one, or an unreachable verifier all result in the submission being rejected. It does not wave anything through when Cloudflare is having a bad day.
That is the right trade for a form that writes to your database, and it is worth knowing because it means a wrong secret key rejects everything rather than silently doing nothing. If real submissions stop arriving right after you turn this on, check the keys before looking anywhere else.
Rate limiting is separate
Independent of Turnstile, and always on: repeat submissions and repeat votes from one visitor in a short window are refused. That limits the damage from anything that does get through.
Troubleshooting
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Every submission is rejected | Wrong secret key, or the wrong domain | Check both keys; turn Turnstile off to confirm the cause |
| The widget does not render | The site key is missing or for another domain | Check the site key |
| Spam still arrives | Turnstile is on for one action, not both | Turn it on for the other |
| Old reCAPTCHA keys are still there | They are preserved, not used | Ignore them |
What to do next
Advanced settings is the last of the free tabs.