Anti-spam honeypot

This is a feature available to all web forms in the form settings. On that settings page, you will find a “Form Options” section toward the bottom. The “Anti-spam honeypot” can be activated here, and is our recommended first step toward avoiding spam.

This feature is regularly updated and maintained by the Gravity Forms software, and works by creating a hidden form field that a regular visitor would not see (but a robot would).Ìý.

Invisible reCAPTCHA

There is another method for detecting robots filling out your form, the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, or “CAPTCHA” for short. You have likely encountered these with the checkbox you select to claim you are not a robot, at which point the website may prompt you to prove you are a human by identifying traffic lights.

Unfortunately, many of the CAPTCHA solutions on the market introduce barriers for visitors who may rely on assistive technologies. For this reason, we advise only using the “invisible reCAPTCHA” version of this technology. Invisible reCAPTCHA simply displays a badge on your form and does not require every user to complete a CAPTCHA test — the test is only displayed if the software suspects suspicious traffic.

To implement reCAPTCHA, please contact us atÌýum.weboffice@maine.eduÌýand our team will add the appropriate “key” information into your website’s form section, and will add the invisible reCAPTCHA option to the form(s) you identify.

Decide who should get email notifications

In some cases, no one needs to be immediately alerted when a web form is submitted (for example, if the form is collecting feedback that is only reviewed at the end of a semester). If this is the case, you can turn off the notification altogether.

Most of the time you do want someone to be alerted when a form is filled out. There are three options you may use to specify the recipient of the “Send to Email” option: Enter Email, Select a Field, and Configure Routing.

Enter Email

You can specify an email address to receive the notification by updating the “Send to Email” field with an email address.ÌýPlease remove the {admin_email} placeholder when updating the notification to reduce unneeded email traffic.

Select a Field

This option is appropriate to use when the notification should go to the person filling out the form, also known as an automatic response.ÌýYour form must have an email field to use this option, and we strongly recommend you require an email address for form submissions when setting up an auto-response.

Configure Routing

This allows a notification to be sent to different email addresses depending on values selected in the form. This is useful if your form collects information that may need follow up by different people.

Customize the “From” name and email in the notification

By default, a notification will be seen as coming from an email address associated with web form submissions. We recommend setting specific “from” information for your notifications:

• Option 1:ÌýUse your name and email addressÌý(or name and address of your department/group). This will ensure that anyone who clicks “reply” will have their message sent to you and not our web server’s default address.
• Option 2: Use the name and email address entered into the form.ÌýThis option is useful in that it allows you to click “reply” on an incoming email to respond to the person who submitted the form. If you use option 2, you must use the “Reply To” option to pick an email address from the form.

With either option, the “From Email” field must be an @maine.edu email address, as the emails are being sent from UMS servers.

Customize the “Subject” of the notification

By default, a notification has this as its subject line:
New submission from {form_title}
If left as-is, every email notification received will have the same subject line, which may not be helpful for your inbox.

To improve this, we recommend adding a unique identifier (form variable) to the subject line. You may find a list of form variables by clicking the drop-down icon to the right of the subject line. In that list you will find your form’s fields as you set them up. Adding the submitter’s last name or company name may be helpful (as one example). If you are unsure of what to choose, the “Entry ID” option will add a number that is specific to that form submission.

For help in configuring your email notifications, consider our “Beyond the basics” website training where web forms are discussed, or email us atÌýum.weboffice@maine.eduÌýif you would like us to review your web form notifications with you.

We recommend everyone who has web forms on the 91¸£Àû website review this information, and contact us at Digital Communications with any questions about web forms you have published, and the data they are collecting.

A more accessible version of reCAPTCHA is now available for our web forms that does not have this shortcoming. Version 3 of reCAPTCHA relies on unobtrusive “scoring” to identify spam, and does not require any action on the part of the form submitter. If you are interested in adding anti-spam technology to your web form(s), please contact us atÌýum.weboffice@maine.eduÌýand we can help.

A note about web form names

By default web forms submit notifications to an email address owned by Digital Communications. Because of this, we receive many web form notifications, spam included. Giving your web form a unique name will help us identify the source of these notifications, and allow us to proactively add the new anti-spam feature. If you have web forms named “contact us,” “contact,” “subscribe” or another general name, consider changing your web form name to be more specific to your website, for example “Contact 91¸£Àû Digital Communications.” This may be helpful to you as well, if you are the recipient of several different web forms.

Questions about your forms?

Contact us at um.weboffice@maine.edu, and we will be happy to review your web forms for best practices.

The most important first step for an accessible web form is the content around the form itself. Make sure your instructions are brief, clear, and set the visitor’s expectations properly. Explain what filling out the form is going to accomplish for them. In the example of a contact form, explain up front how soon a response should be expected. If you are setting your form up to have multiple pages, it is very important to tell the visitor how long the form really is.

Identify required fields

Our forms automatically identify when you have set a field to be required, but it is good to indicate at the start of the form how required fields are indicated:

* indicates required fields

Use clear labels

For every form field, a “Field Label” and “Description” can be set. While the description is optional, the field label is required for good web accessibility. While it may be clear to you what a form field is for, a visitor using a screen reader relies on form field labels. The optional description can give additional guidance, when necessary.

Labels for checkbox and radio button sets: There may be times when a checkbox (or radio button) may seem self-explanatory, for example:

please add me to your mailing list

The above example still needs a proper label for web accessibility, such as this improvement:
Join our mailing list

please add me to your mailing list

Placeholder text can be helpful

Sometimes it can be useful to give visitors a hint about information you are requesting. If you want to show an example of what you want, placeholder text can appear inside the form field. Placeholder text will go away when the visitor starts typing in the field, and is not included in a form submission. This option is available in the “Appearance” tab of the form field options.

In most cases, a clear form label and description are sufficient for a form field.

Use text buttons

Our form system uses text buttons by default. While there is an option to make the button an image, this should be avoided for proper web accessibility. By default, the submit button says “Submit” but you can customize this text for the purpose of the form. For example, if the form is to subscribe to a newsletter, the button should say “Subscribe.” This may be set in “Form options.”