Kitgenix CAPTCHA for Cloudflare Turnstile vs La Sentinelle antispam

Spam is expensive: it wastes time, clogs inboxes, creates fake accounts, and on stores it can lead to abandoned checkout noise and fraudulent activity. Traditional CAPTCHA solutions can also hurt conversions by adding friction. Cloudflare Turnstile is a modern, privacy-first CAPTCHA alternative designed to reduce friction for real people while still blocking bots. Kitgenix CAPTCHA for Cloudflare Turnstile is a production-ready Turnstile integration for WordPress that focuses on reliability in real-world setups: – Server-side token verification (using Cloudflare’s official endpoint) – Fast, conditional loading (only where needed) – Support for dynamic/AJAX forms and modern WooCommerce Blocks / Store API checkout – Security features: replay protection, proxy-aware IP handling, whitelisting, and developer mode (warn-only) You can enable/disable each integration (and many per-form toggles), choose auto-injection vs shortcode-only placement, customise display and messaging, and use built-in diagnostics and Site Health checks to troubleshoot. The plugin also includes a real setup-verification gate for sensitive flows, a Portability tab for JSON export/import, a Support tab with active protection alerts, per-integration analytics, CSV exports, privacy-safe metrics, and recent verification events, and support for defining keys through wp-config.php constants or environment variables. Supported integrations (where Turnstile can be added) All integrations are enable-able from settings. Many also support Mode: Auto vs Shortcode. WordPress Core – Login – Custom login screens rendered with wp_login_form() – Registration – Lost password – Reset password – Comments (standard WordPress comment forms, including safe handling for comment failures/redirects) WooCommerce (Classic) – Checkout – Product reviews – My Account login – My Account registration – Lost password WooCommerce Blocks (Store API / Block Checkout) – UI rendering inside block-based checkout – Adds token to Store API requests (header and/or extensions payload when available) – Server-side validation of Store API checkout requests – Supports “shortcode-only mode” behaviour so you can control placement Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) – Checkout – Login – Register – Profile editor Form plugins – Contact Form 7 (CF7) – WPForms – Fluent Forms – Formidable Forms – Forminator – Gravity Forms – JetFormBuilder – Jetpack Forms – Kadence Forms – Elementor Forms (including popups and AJAX submissions) Membership / community / newsletters – Ultimate Member (login, registration, password reset) – MemberPress (signup / checkout) – Paid Memberships Pro (checkout / registration) – MailPoet forms – wpDiscuz comment forms Community / forums – bbPress (topic/reply flows where applicable) – BuddyPress (flows where applicable) Core features (site-wide) Turnstile widget rendering – Uses Cloudflare’s official Turnstile API script – Widget options: – Theme: auto / light / dark – Size: normal / compact / flexible – Appearance: stored as Turnstile “appearance” option (defaults to always) – Language: auto or explicit locale (passed via hl=...) Settings & admin experience – Settings page under the shared Kitgenix WP admin menu – Live “test widget” preview on the settings screen (renders when a Site Key is present) – Setup verification gate helps confirm the widget works before auth-sensitive integrations are relied on – Site Key + Secret Key storage (secret not printed in HTML by default) – “Reveal secret key” (admins only, nonce-protected AJAX action) Messaging & UX – Custom error message (admin-configurable, used across integrations) – Extra message text (optional text displayed alongside/under the widget) – “Disable submit until completed” option (frontend behaviour via plugin JS) Replay protection (enabled by default) – Detects re-used tokens (hash stored in transients) and blocks replays – TTL is filterable – Stores hashed token markers under the transient prefix kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_ – Sets a short-lived cookie (kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_replay, ~120s) when replay is detected (for frontend behaviour/messages) – Dedicated replay message (filterable) Developer mode (warn-only) – Verification failures do not block submissions – Failures are logged (and emitted via a developer log action) – Optional inline warning annotation for admins (frontend config) Whitelisting (skip Turnstile + skip loading API script) – Whitelist logged-in users – Whitelist by IP (exact, wildcards, CIDR — including IPv6) – Whitelist by User-Agent (substring or wildcard matching) – Filter hook to override whitelist decision Proxy / real-IP handling – Optional trust of proxy headers (Cloudflare / X-Forwarded-For style) – Trusted proxy IP list / trust controls – Forwarded headers are only honoured when the request originates from a trusted proxy Performance & resilience – Conditional script loading only where needed – Async/strategy-based script loading (depending on WP version) – Adds resource hints (preconnect / dns-prefetch) for Turnstile domain – Detects duplicate Turnstile API loaders (if another plugin/theme enqueues api.js): – Stores detection in the transient kitgenix_turnstile_duplicate_scripts – Shows admin notice on settings and Plugins screen – Includes dismiss link (nonce-protected, uses kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_dismiss_dupe=1) Site Health + diagnostics – Adds a Site Health test: “Cloudflare Turnstile readiness” – Checks: – Keys present – Duplicate API loader transient (kitgenix_turnstile_duplicate_scripts) – Last verification success/failure snapshot – Heuristic warning if common optimisation/caching plugins are active – Stores the last verify outcome (success, time, error codes) for Site Health display – Tracks privacy-safe counters in kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_metrics (checks total/passed/failed/retries plus per-integration breakdowns) – Raises automatic admin and Site Health alerts when recent verification failures spike or Cloudflare siteverify requests start failing at the HTTP layer – Shows per-integration analytics in the Support tab so admins can compare passes, failures, retries, and friction by protected flow – Shows active protection alerts in the Support tab for verification spikes, blocked API requests, and duplicate loader conflicts – Exports per-integration analytics and the recent diagnostic log as CSV from the Support tab – Shows a recent diagnostic log in the Support tab so admins can review the last verification events without storing raw IPs or URLs Portability and rollout Export settings to JSON and import them into another site from the Portability tab. Choose whether exported settings include your Turnstile keys. Import settings in a controlled way for repeatable deployments. Define KITGENIX_CAPTCHA_FOR_CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY and KITGENIX_CAPTCHA_FOR_CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY in wp-config.php or your environment when you want keys managed outside the database. Manual placement (shortcode) If you have a custom form or an unsupported plugin, you can manually render the widget: [kitgenix_turnstile] Shortcode output includes: – a nonce field – a hidden cf-turnstile-response input – the widget container (with data-sitekey) – support for passing arbitrary attributes via shortcode attributes Many supported integrations also offer Shortcode-only mode (you place the shortcode where you want; the plugin validates server-side without auto-injection). Quick Start Install and activate the plugin. Open the Turnstile settings under the Kitgenix hub in wp-admin. Add your Cloudflare Turnstile Site Key and Secret Key. Configure widget options (theme/size/appearance/language) and messaging if needed. Enable the integrations (and per-form toggles) you want. Save, then test the key user journeys: login, registration, checkout, and your main contact form. Tip: Start with Developer mode (warn-only) on staging or during rollout. Once you’re satisfied, disable warn-only to enforce blocking. Performance and caching notes (important for stores) Turnstile is lightweight, but aggressive optimisation can break rendering or token freshness. If you use caching/optimisation plugins: – Allowlist https://challenges.cloudflare.com – Avoid full-page caching on login/account/checkout pages – Avoid combining/inlining the Turnstile loader – Avoid heavily delaying Elementor/form plugin scripts – Ensure outbound HTTP requests to Cloudflare are not blocked (needed for server-side verification) Settings Overview Main settings: – Site Key – Secret Key (with “secret present” state, clear/reveal) – Theme (auto/light/dark) – Size (normal/compact/flexible) – Appearance (Turnstile appearance option) – Language (auto or specific locale) – Disable submit until completed – Custom error message – Extra message text Security & advanced: – Replay protection (on/off) – Developer mode (warn-only) – Whitelist logged-in users – Whitelist IPs (wildcards/CIDR, including IPv6) – Whitelist user agents – Proxy trust (enable/disable) – Trusted proxy IPs / trust controls – Setup verification before sensitive rollouts Portability & operations: – Export settings to JSON – Import settings from JSON – Optionally include or exclude site keys during transfer – Support KITGENIX_CAPTCHA_FOR_CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY and KITGENIX_CAPTCHA_FOR_CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY as constants or environment-variable overrides for keys Integrations (enable + per-form toggles where available): – WordPress Core (login/register/lost password/reset password/standard comments) – WooCommerce (checkout/product reviews/login/register/lost password) – WooCommerce Blocks mode (auto vs shortcode-only) – Easy Digital Downloads (checkout/login/register/profile) – Contact Form 7 – WPForms – Fluent Forms – Formidable Forms – Forminator – Gravity Forms – Jetpack Forms – Kadence Forms – Elementor Forms – bbPress – BuddyPress Developers Shortcode: [kitgenix_turnstile] Server-side verification endpoint: https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify Filters (script/loading): – kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_script_url( $url, $settings ) – kitgenix_turnstile_freshness_ms – kitgenix_turnstile_inline_style Filters (verification / request handling): – kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_url – kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_timeout – kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_sslverify – kitgenix_turnstile_siteverify_http_args – kitgenix_turnstile_send_remoteip – kitgenix_turnstile_remote_ip – kitgenix_turnstile_token_from_request – kitgenix_turnstile_handle_comment_form – kitgenix_turnstile_error_codes – kitgenix_turnstile_error_message – kitgenix_turnstile_replay_message – kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_{context}_turnstile_error_message Filters (replay protection): – kitgenix_turnstile_replay_ttl Filters (operational alerts): – kitgenix_turnstile_alert_window_seconds – kitgenix_turnstile_alert_failure_spike_min_failures – kitgenix_turnstile_alert_failure_spike_failure_rate – kitgenix_turnstile_alert_http_error_min_failures Filters (whitelist / proxy trust): – kitgenix_turnstile_is_whitelisted( $is_whitelisted, $details ) – kitgenix_turnstile_trust_headers – kitgenix_turnstile_trusted_proxies Internal identifiers (options / transients / cookies / meta): – Option: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_settings – Settings group (Settings API): kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_settings_group – Option: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_metrics – Option: kitgenix_turnstile_recent_event_log – Option: kitgenix_turnstile_last_verify – Transient: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_do_activation_redirect – Transient: kitgenix_turnstile_duplicate_scripts – Transient prefix (replay protection): kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_ – Cookie (replay notice): kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_replay – WooCommerce order meta (Blocks/Store API verification): _kitgenix_turnstile_verified Internal nonces / actions: – Shortcode/form nonce field name: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_nonce – Shortcode/form nonce action: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_action – Settings save nonce field name: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_settings_nonce – Settings save nonce action: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_settings_save – Admin AJAX action (reveal saved secret): kitgenix_turnstile_get_secret (WordPress hook: wp_ajax_kitgenix_turnstile_get_secret) – Admin AJAX nonce action (reveal saved secret): kitgenix_turnstile_reveal_secret – Admin-post action (analytics exports): kitgenix_turnstile_export_analytics – Admin-post nonce action (analytics exports): kitgenix_turnstile_export_analytics – Duplicate-loader notice dismiss query arg: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_dismiss_dupe – Duplicate-loader notice dismiss nonce action: kitgenix_captcha_for_cloudflare_turnstile_ts_dismiss Actions (developer logging): – kitgenix_turnstile_dev_log External Services This plugin uses Cloudflare Turnstile to verify requests and prevent spam and abuse. The plugin may: – Load the Turnstile script: https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/api.js – Submit verification requests server-side to: https://challenges.cloudflare.com/turnstile/v0/siteverify When verification is enabled, the plugin sends to Cloudflare: – Your Turnstile secret key – The Turnstile response token – The visitor IP address (as the optional remoteip parameter, when enabled) The plugin does not send the visitor’s browser user agent to Cloudflare as part of the verification payload (the HTTP request itself is made server-side by WordPress). If proxy trust is enabled, the plugin may read forwarding headers (e.g. CF-Connecting-IP, X-Forwarded-For) to determine the client IP, but only when requests originate from configured trusted proxies. The plugin does not add tracking cookies itself and does not sell or share personal data. Cloudflare Turnstile Terms: https://developers.cloudflare.com/turnstile/ Cloudflare Privacy Policy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ This plugin also includes a shared “Kitgenix hub” component in wp-admin which may fetch publicly available plugin metadata from WordPress.org using the WordPress core plugins_api() function (WordPress.org Plugins API). When it runs: only in wp-admin (Kitgenix plugin admin pages) Data sent: plugin slug(s) (no personal data) Data received: publicly available plugin information (e.g. active installs, ratings) Caching: responses are cached locally using transients for ~1 day: kitgenix_hub_wporg_active_installs_v1 kitgenix_hub_wporg_ratings_v1 Trademark Notice “Cloudflare” and the Cloudflare logo are trademarks of Cloudflare, Inc. This plugin is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cloudflare, Inc. Support Development If this plugin helps keep spam away without slowing your site down, you can support ongoing development here: https://buymeacoffee.com/kitgenix Credits Built with ❤︎ by @kitgenix – https://kitgenix.com

Feel safe knowing that your website is safe from spam. La Sentinelle will guard your WordPress website against spam in a simple and effective way. It has antispam filters for comment forms and registration forms and can be extended to support plugins. The default settings should catch most spambots, and there is a settingspage to set it up according to your wishes. Current features include: 3 antispam features; Honeypot, Nonce, Form Timeout. These 3 spamfilters depend on JavaScript on the frontend. 1 antispam feature; Stop Forum Spam. Settingspage to set things up according to your wishes. Transparent to the visitor, no nagging with Captcha’s or other annoying things. By default no use of third-party services and no tracking of visitors. Lightweight and simple code. Logging for WordPress Comments and which spamfilter marked it as spam. Logging for Custom forms and which spamfilter marked it as spam. Statistics for every form how many spam submissions were blocked. WordPress forms that are protected: WordPress Comments form. WordPress Login form. WordPress Register form. WordPress Lost Password form. Form Plugins that are protected: Caldera Forms. Clean Login (Login form). Contact Form 7. Easy Digital Downloads (Login form, Register form). Everest Forms. Formidable Form Builder. Forminator. Newsletter Optin Box plugin (noptin) (standalone forms). Ultimate Member (Login form, Register form and Lost Password form). WooCommerce (Login form, Lost Password form). WPForms Lite. WP Job Manager plugin (submit job form when registering is enabled). Support If you have a problem or a feature request, please post it on the plugin’s support forum on wordpress.org. I will do my best to respond as soon as possible. If you send me an email, I will not reply. Please use the support forum. Translations Translations can be added very easily through GlotPress. You can start translating strings there for your locale. They need to be validated though, so if there’s no validator yet, and you want to apply for being validator (PTE), please post it on the support forum. I will make a request on make/polyglots to have you added as validator for this plugin/locale. How to choose an antispam plugin When you look through the WordPress Plugin Repository you will see more than a hundred antispam plugins. Which one is the best one? Short answer, there is no “best one”. No spamfilter and no method for spamfiltering is perfect. Slightly longer answer, you could try about twenty and choose the one that fits your needs best. But there is also a really long answer. There are different methods that can be used against spam, and every method has its drawbacks. In my opinion, having a low number of false positives is more important than perfectly marking all spam, you don’t want to miss out on important people or information. Nagging the user in some way has a similar effect, the user might not even want to bother with that and just walk away. Third party services: Services like Akismet, OOPSpam, Stop Forum Spam and also reCAPTCHA offer third party services to check for spam. This can be very effective, but you are giving user submitted data away to these third parties and are also giving your users up for tracking them. Captcha’s, reCAPTCHA and Quizz Questions: You are annoying your users and probably sending some of them away. This especially counts for reCAPTCHA for visitors who have third party cookies disabled. Blacklists: Often running behind the facts. That goes for the way of getting users off that list, and also in getting users on that list. Referer check: check if the Referer header is set correctly. You can never trust it is set correctly. Modern browsers are limiting the use of Referers, though for now that is mostly for third-party domains. JavaScript methods: Spammers often (always?) don’t use JavaScript, they just post the form with spammy data. Drawback for this method is that statistics say that about 1 percent of users has JavaScript disabled. Also, some websites have broken JavaScript, which might make the spamfilter break as well. Activation email for registering users. Users only get activated after clicking a link in an activation email. You still have all the non-activated users in your site however. You could have a bright idea about combining several methods, but then you get the drawbacks of all the methods you use. Another complication of choosing a good plugin is that most antispam plugins don’t tell you what methods they use. The documentation doesn’t tell you, and looking at the source code just leaves you confused at the chaos that it often is. My main motivation for writing this plugin is to offer a plugin that does spamfiltering with JavaScript methods in a simple and effective way. The claimed 1 percent of users that has JavaScript disabled will also be tech-savy enough to enable it again for your website. Compatibility This plugin is compatible with ClassicPress. Contributions This plugin is also available in Codeberg.