K2 Captcha conflicts with core joomla captcha

Question

I have been facing problem with user registration on my Joomla website. I have installed K2 as well. Its basically Captcha recaptcha which is creating problem and i am not able to fix it. I have enabled core joomla captcha recaptcha plugin. When I enable both core joomla n K2 captcha recaptcha then registration forms gives error saying "the words you typed did not match the ones displayed". Now if I disable core joomla captcha recaptcha. Then registration form works but forget password and forget username page doesn't populate captcha and recaptha. Similarly if I disable K2 captcha recaptcha the registration form and comments forms does not show captcha and recaptcha while captcha recaptcha on other pages works fine. I don't know how to fix it. Please help.

Answer 1

I had same problem, it was pain for me and shame for component creators. As I see, many other have same problem, and it's not solved yet. I have some bypass:

It working with my Joomla 3.1.5 and K2 v2.6.7

SOLUTION

1. with ftp go to component/com_k2/templates/
2. rename (or remove) register.php file - on registration page you (users) will see
   standard joomla registration form with captcha working
3. be sure, that your captcha plugin is enabled and allowed on registration
4. important! New registered users will be K2 users already. I found other solutions, but it need to add them manually by admin

I strongly reccomend other captcha plugins than reCaptcha, for me osolCaptcha works perfect, and is people friendly. I hope it can helps. On my site it working 100%

Answer 2

It is a Js conflict between the two captchas.

Removing the k2 register will help, it will fall back and use joomla register process instead. 1) Check the order of registration plugins 2) Try adjusting in the K2 parameters which version of JS to use.

Answer 3

This is an old question but worth publishing a solution as today I was looking for it myself and there's no definitive answer anywhere.

It is all in the settings. No editing of files needed. Tested on Joomla 3.9.16. Follow these steps to eliminate the conflict:

1. Enable Captcha-ReCaptcha plug-in in Joomla.
2. Go to Joomla's Global Configuration. Set default captcha to Captcha-ReCaptcha.
3. Go to "Site" in K2 parameters and set it to Google reCaptcha (or both), enable it for registered users, enter reCaptcha keys, and enable it on registration form.
4. Go to User Manager's options and set Captcha to "None Selected".

Last step is critical to stop Joomla recaptcha from firing while using K2 and creating the conflict.

Answer 4

I had/have a similar issue with a new install of Joomla 3.2 and K2 2.6.7, with regard to captcha, K2, Joomla and registration pages

My work around was to remove K2

How I arrived at that was another problem I also had with K2 was that I could not save/edit/change any of its parameters. I could not add the captcha keys as required, could not change any of the switches, etc. I could select save and Joomla would respond by saying my configuration changes were saved, but the changes would have all reverted back to their original form and/or their default setting or content.

I did notice that K2 had a switch below the captcha keys subsection under the advanced tab which said something to the effect "enable captcha to show on registration page" and the default was set to "no" or not to be enabled.

The minute i removed K2, captcha showed up on the registration page and all works well now.......minus having the benefits of K2

With K2, the password reset and the username reset worked just fine, only the registration page would not show captcha, and going back to my other problem of not being able to change the extensions (K2) parameters, it was locked not to show.

That is the only way I found to get the captcha on my reg page, as for the parameter saving problem, unable to rectify it, and no-one on the K2 site appears to acknowledge or have any suggestions to solve the problem.

Hope this helps,

Dale