Captcha not showing

[Chris Partridge]

People are complaining that the captcha is not showing when they try to register. Is this a MacOS issue?

[bontfaen]

Thanks Chris, I wondered are you a village resident or just a Nabble user or Nabble support person? Who are these people that are complaining? Do they have Macs or PCs? I noticed when I added the Captcha option to the forum that it didn't show up well with the colour scheme I selected and I use a Mac. Surely this is more likely an issue for Nabble rather than me? Mike

[Chris Partridge]

I'm a nabble user, for Langstone Cutters. Some members are not seeing the captcha when they try to register - it is an interesting suggestion that it might be a screen colour thing. I will pass on the thought and see if it gets them anywhere.
Chris

[Chris Partridge]

Is it possible to take the captcha off?

[bontfaen]

It must be, however the whole point of using this facility surely is to stop robotic spam jamming up forums?

Mike

[Chris Partridge]

That is the aim, but they don't work very well and are b nuisance.

[Mencey Melgar]

Captcha is extremely necessary for security, I saw a similar problem a month ago or so and nabble team just changed the "captcha provider", I suppose that they'll do the same now. Please wait until a nabble member answer you.

[GregChapman]

Hi Chris,

Chris Partridge wrote

That is the aim, but they don't work very well and are b nuisance.

I am surprised you say they are a nuisance. They should only rarely appear and then only for those who are very casual and rare visitors to your site - that is assuming that your forum is set up to allow only registered users to post.

Perhaps you have not up-rated the default settings in Nabble - which allow "anyone" to post - That means folk don't bother to register and that means that they see Captchas all the time. Change your settings and the issue will go away.

[Pedro]

Could you give me the url to your forum?

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

That will be:
http://langstone-cutters-rowing-club.13679.n7.nabble.com/

[Pedro]

That's weird, I can see the captcha.

[Chris Partridge]

I can see the captcha too, which makes it difficult for me to advise members who can't.
Chris

[GregChapman]

You will find the captcha image disappears if you turn off Javascript. Is that their problem?

(Oops! Also makes the "Post Message" button disappear!  )

[Chris Partridge]

Hi Greg....nice to bump into you online....
Would Mac users be likely to have Javascript turned off?
Is this a common condition?
If so, how do we avoid it?
Chris

[GregChapman]

Hi Chris,

You'd be surprised where I pop up!

I had missed the point that it was only Mac users that have the problem.

I just had the thought that some have read, and believe, that having JavaScript enabled makes their browser less secure and I thought I would test that condition.

My general understanding is that Mac users tend to think they are secure by virtue of being on a Mac and turning off JavaScript wouldn't be natural for them. But I stand to be corrected on that...

[Chris Partridge]

Hi Pedro,
Any more thoughts about the captcha problem?
I want to get the forum going and I can't go further until this is sorted out. There is enough resistance as it is, without technical hassles getting registered.
Best,
Chris

[Chris Partridge]

People are reporting problems with PCs too, so it must be a Nabble problem.

[Chris Partridge]

OK in desperation I deleted the whole forum and tried to start a new one. This time I got 'error opening zip file'.
This is getting VERY annoying.

[GregChapman]

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately, it was almost certainly a mistake to delete the forum.

There's no ZIP file involved in creating a new forum. What are you doing? If you are trying to restore a forum from the file that Nabble sent you when you deleted your forum, then the thing to do is send the file back to Nabble who will use it to restore your forum. All you can do is create a new forum under a new name.

It might have been worthwhile asking your users to send you a screen dump of exactly what they do see on their screen. If there really is a problem then it will help Nabble diagnose it. I've known people say "I can't see the captcha" when what they mean is "I can't read the captcha" In that case the user had failed to work out that they all contain five characters, a mix of upper case letters and numbers (no lower case or punctuation) and they were repeatedly typing the wrong code.

It could also be worthwhile asking exactly what platform/browsers those with problems are using and make a test at:

http://browsershots.org

a remarkably useful tool when people tell you a page doesn't display as expected on their hardware/software.

[Chris Partridge]

Actually, deleting the forum and starting again has been a big success....everyone is signing up with few problems and it is getting to be rather popular. Hooray!