Extension:ConfirmRead

**MediaWiki extensions manual**
ConfirmRead; Release status: stable
Implementation	Page action
Description	Adds CAPTCHAs for page access
Author(s)	DG
Latest version	0.3 (July 2026)
Compatibility policy	Main branch maintains backward compatibility.
MediaWiki	1.39.4+
PHP	8.1+
Database changes	No
	Parameters $wgConfirmReadWhitelisted; $wgConfirmReadWhitelistedClients;
	Hooks used BeforeInitialize; BeforePageDisplay;
Licence	GNU General Public License 3.0 or later
Download	GitHub: project page; git repository URL; commit history; ; ; README

ConfirmRead requires anonymous users to solve a Captcha or pass a check (Cloudflare Turnstile) before they can access the wiki.

Requires the ConfirmEdit extension. ConfirmRead has not been tested with anything other than hCaptcha and Cloudflare's Turnstile.

Installation

Download and place the file(s) in a directory called ConfirmRead in your extensions/ folder.
Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
```
wfLoadExtension( 'ConfirmRead' );
```
Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Set $wgCaptchaTriggers to an empty array if you do not require Captchas for specific abuse-sensitive actions like edits and logins.
Any pages that you want to be exempted from a Captcha check can be added to $wgConfirmReadWhitelisted. If you want both the page and all of its subpages (and subpages below them) to be exempted, append /* to the pagename, e.g.

// Exempt Main Page, News and all subpages of News
$wgConfirmReadWhitelisted = [ "Main Page", "News/*" ];

You can allow Googlebot to skip captcha tests. Since captchas are known to prevent Googlebot from crawling your wiki, this can be useful if you need to maintain or restore your wiki's visibility in Google Search. To enable this feature, add the following line to your local settings :

$wgConfirmReadWhitelistedClients = [ "Googlebot" ];