So you’re a comic creator, and it’s update day, but instead of your new comic posting as usual, your readers get a suspicious malware warning and never come to your site again. What happened? You’ve probably been hacked.

Captcha stops robots, and Keanu.

In my last article, I explained how to beef up your login page by changing your username to something besides “Admin”. That’s great, but it’s only one step toward securing your site from evil-doers. Another security measure you should consider is adding some sort of captcha device. What’s “captcha”? Well young Padawan, you know when you try to log into some websites and you are required to decipher some cryptic looking jumbled letters, that’s captcha.

Now since you’re a comic creator, I’m assuming that you’re using the typical WordPress/Comicpress setup. The best way to add captcha to your WordPress site is by simply installing a plugin. There are a ton of varieties. Some have those weird scrambled words, some have ask security questions like “what’s your mother’s maiden name” (although those are only good in very specific situations), and some that even ask you to solve “simple” math problems. Best part about adding captcha to your site? It’s really hard for hackers to get past it.

Here’s a list of a few different captcha plugins that have been well reviewed. All are available directly from within the WordPress plugin page, or from WordPress.org. Will adding captcha to your website make your site 100% invulnerable to malicious attacks? No, but this minor change will go a long way toward securing your website, and keeping your comic or blog on schedule.

Before making any major changes to your wordpress site, backup everything. If you don’t feel comfortable making these changes, hire a professional.

• Captcha- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/captcha/
  “Captcha plugin allows you to protect your website from spam using math logic which can be used for login, registration, reseting password, comments forms.”
• SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/
  “Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress forms for comments, registration, lost password, login, or all. In order to post comments or register, users will have to type in the code shown on the image. This prevents spam from automated bots. Adds security. Works great with Akismet. Also is fully WP, WPMU, and BuddyPress compatible.”
• Sweet Captcha- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sweetcaptcha-revolutionary-free-captcha-service/
  “Instead of asking the user to input difficult and boring text, Sweet Captcha offers a cute and interactive friendly user experience. The Sweet Captcha consists of a question the user needs to answer by dragging the correct answer. Sweet Catpcha works on smartphones, iphones, ipads and Android.”
• Enmask Captcha- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/enmask-captcha-text-based-hosted-captcha-solution/
  “EnMask Captcha is based on encrypted text and paired with matching web fonts so user will see clearly the challenge text while the spam programs see the underlying encrypted text. Users will have much better Captcha experience then trying to guess the difficult twisted image based Captcha solution. It’s fun and helps improving user accuracy rate when the answer characters showing the same font.”
• Invisible Captcha- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/invisible-captcha/
  “Smart invisible captcha for wordpress comments. Visitors of your website don’t need to enter letters and numbers. This small plugin automatically 100% protects your website from spam in comments.”

What’s your favorite captcha plugin? Post a link and description in the comments below.