WordPress plugin developers have teamed up with Cloudflare to incorporate the Turnstile feature into WordPress. Even though developers have started supporting the privacy feature, some in the WordPress community are reluctant to adopt it. Cloudflare recently rolled out the free and non-intrusive privacy-centered replacement for CAPTCHA, and the WordPress community started bringing in support for the novel solution. But the trend is not uniform amongst developers leaving early adopters confused.
What is Cloudflare Turnstile
Turnstile is a spam blocker that protects users when they fill out forms such as contact, login, registration forms, etc. It is a virtually invisible widget that provides a seamless user experience for site visitors without collecting or storing their information. An early report on the effectiveness of Turnstile found only one challenge out of 127 site visitors.
Integration With WordPress
Even though Cloudflare did not mention a WordPress plugin integration during Turnstile’s announcement, a Cloudflare representative reportedly agreed that they are indeed working on a WordPress plugin. Meanwhile, several WordPress plugins have already tethered Turnstile into their software to improve accessibility.
The publishers of the WS Form WordPress plugin are one of the earliest adopters of Turnstile support. They integrated the widget into their plugin on October 4, 2022, as a choosable option for users interested in opting for it. Three days later, the publisher behind the Fluent Forms WordPress plugin integrated support for Turnstile and distributed a helpful tutorial to guide users through the process. Again, on October 11, 2022, the Site Reviews plugin with 40,000 WordPress publishers also added support for the widget.
Interestingly, the oldest contact form, Contact Form 7, hasn’t yet added support for Turnstile. When a publisher requested Contact 7 to provide support for Turnstile, they were told to wait till official support was in place for the integration to happen.
The Turnstile is in Beta
Looks like the publisher of Contact Form 7 has a valid reason for not integrating Turnstile for the time being. They believe that a product undergoing beta testing might contain some problems that require further testing to resolve. The people who installed Turnstile are testing it for the global network. The surge in the number of people subscribing to the widget’s capability is because Cloudflare has a history of providing high-quality support for privacy and security-related concerns of publishers.
Eventually, more and more WordPress plugins will start integrating Turnstile, allowing website owners to worry less about potential spammers. Till then, it’s all about the waiting game.
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