eZ Comments is setup with a third party system for preventing spam comments, reCaptcha. reCaptcha introduces a security dialog that asks the user to enter a codeword before he is allowed to post a comment. This will filter out the automatic spam functions because the dialogue is not machine readable.

The steps below sum up what is needed to make captcha work on your eZ Publish commenting system:

• Go to http://recaptcha.net, open an account, then fetch a public and a private key to enter into your ini settings in eZ Comments (see eZ Comments Technical Manual v 1.1 for further documentation)
• Activate the functionality by changing settings in "ezcomments.ini.append.php". (see eZ Comments Technical Manual v 1.1 for further documentation)
• Set up the "Editor" role to bypass the captcha functionality. If you have other roles that do not need to go through the captcha function, please make bypassing policies for these roles as well. (See "Setting bypassing policies for the "Editor role")
• After reCaptcha is setup properly, it's functionality is enabled for use by anonymous users.

Note: By default the captcha functionality is always disabled for the "Administrator" role.