Mark E. Buckley

Protecting your Web Site

How can you prevent others from copying the images and code from your web site.

Ultimately, it can not be done. There are some strategies you can implement.

Don't worry about it. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Copyright everything. The only downside is the legal expenses in enforcing your rights.

Divide and Conquer. Break your web pages into several different files. Use an external CSS sheet. In fact use several different CSS sheets. Move your javascript to an external .js file.

Include your files. Use PHP, ASP or Perl and include your files. You can divide your page into header, navigation and content files. Still the rendered file will show the HTML in total.

Block right clicking with javascript. This does not work.

Sign your artwork. You can imprint a signature with some software programs. You can also insert an actual signature and copyright at the bottom of your art.

Slice it up. You can slice your images. Then visitors can only copy small 10x10 sections at a time. Of course this can be outmaneuvered with a screen snapshot.

Use Flash. Flash files can be protected. Of course there are programs out there that can overcome this and read your file. However you can be creative with loadMovie() action scripting that will make the downloaded file meaningless.

Make it really bad. If the site is really bad, no one will copy it. While this might not seem like a winning strategy, it appears to be used by many.

Make it unique. Develop a clever mix of content, colors and graphics that would only be relevant to that particular site. Then the elements in isolation or aggregated would not be beneficial for inclusion in another site.