If visitors can submit forms or comments on your website, Google’s reCAPTCHA is a good choice to provide protection against spam and abuse.
To activate reCAPTCHA on your Joomla! site:
- Login to the back end of your site
- Go to Extensions > Plugins
- Search for and open CAPTCHA – reCAPTCHA; follow the link on this page to get your site’s secret keys from https://www.google.com/recaptcha
- Enter the secret key details on the Joomla! plugin page, from the version dropdown choose the latest version and Enable the plugin
- Go to System > Global Configuration > Site
- Under Default Captcha choose Captcha – Re-Captcha and Save
With these settings reCAPTCHA should be the default when new users register on your site.
If it isn’t:
- go to Users > Manage
- click the options button at the top right
- check under the User Options tab for your Captcha setting
To use reCAPTCHA with other extensions, e.g. with forms or comments, look for options when you configure each extension.