How can I avoid spam in a simple 'Contact us' form ?

[Atle Iversen]

I want the 'Contact us' form to be as simple as possible - CAPTCHA is not wanted !

I've tried an empty field that should be kept empty; it works quite nice, but is not the most "elegant" solution... anyone have any good tips on how to do this as easy for the user as possible (and for me as well, if possible :-) )

I've seen some use simple questions like 'What is the color of the sun' and 'what is the sum of 5 and 3' etc, but doesn't seem too elegant either

[PicnicTutorials]

Those are both the easiest there are. Aside from that you could prevent any links being entered in any of the fields. If they can't submit a URL their spam is useless

[Atle Iversen]

Thanks ! So if we check for "http://" for example, and then stop the message, we should be able to prevent most spam ?

Of course, our users won't be able to send us any links, but if we just report back an error-message telling them that URLs not allowed, it should be acceptable ?

Sounds like a great idea - thank you !

[PicnicTutorials]

Exactly. Trying to remember, i think mine checks for http:// and www. and [url]

[Atle Iversen]

Ahhh..didn't think of [url] - thanks !