WP-Members to include reCAPTCHA

There has been a recurring feature request for some type of CAPTCHA support in the WP-Members membership plugin.  I have held off for awhile as I needed to make some decisions on which direction to go on this project.  I could reinvent the wheel by creating an internal CAPTCHA process unique to WP-Members, but that’s not really appealing for a multitude of reasons.  I had requests to support specific existing WP CAPTCHA plugins, but that wasn’t really a workable possibility either as I would have to pick one to support at the expense of others, or I would support multiple thereby complicating the process.

I settled on including reCAPTCHA.  This decision was made for a number of reasons.  First, it’s a widget that I can easily include in the existing code without too much recoding.  This means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  I like that!

Second, and just as important, I like the fact that it is supported by Google Labs.  This provides some long-term viability.  I like that, too!

I’ve already got some tests running, so I might have this ready to release sooner than expected.  I’ll let everyone know when I have a target date.  Honestly, the CAPTCHA part works fine.  The heavy lifting is going to be programming this to be an optional parameter in the plugin and accommodating users who are upgrading without screwing up their existing installs (always a challenge that too many plugin authors overlook).

Because WP-Members is used in a variety of applications, I can’t assume that users don’t already use reCAPTCHA in some form or another on their site already.  So another challenge will be to make sure this addition does not collide with other potential possibilities (i.e. users of the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin or others).  I found that when I tried to test various other plugins that I got collisions if both were installed.  So, I’ll need to be testing that as well.

If you’re not familiar with CAPTCHA and why you should use it, here’s some background:

• Wikipedia
• Official CAPTCHA site
• Google reCAPTCHA site (you’ll need an API from here)