Create a Spam-free contact form without a captcha / by Cory

Captchas are annoying and only exist to combat spam. I've been using a technique for the past year that doesn't require a captcha and I haven't received a single piece of spam email. Here's how:

  1. Create a form and set the form action to # (we dont want spam bots to know where the form is being submitted to).
  2. dont use a submit button, instead use an <a href="#" class="submit">Submit</a>
  3. Use jquery to trigger the post when the '.submit' link is clicked.

Here's the jQuery code I use to do the form post:

$('.submit').click(function(){ 
  
  // get the text that the user put into the form 
  var name = $('input#contact-name').val(); 
  var email = $('input#contact-email').val(); 
  var message = $('textarea#contact-message').val(); 
  
  // prepare it for an ajax post 
  var dataString = 'name='+ name + '&email=' + email + '&message=' + message;

  // post the form to the page that hosts your email script 
  $.ajax({ 
    type: "POST", 
    url: "/a/contact/", 
    data: dataString, 
    success: function() { 
      $('.contactform form').fadeOut(); 
      $('.contactform form').html("Thanks for reaching out!") .fadeIn(function() { 
        $('#formage'); 
      }); } 
  }); return false;

});