Protect Your Content

"How can I protect my images from being used by other people?"

Since starting your website, you may have noticed how easy it for visitors to copy elements of your page by right-clicking. You are probably concerned that people are stealing your work and claiming it as their own. While there is no fool-proof way to protect everything you put online, there are some steps to take to make it more difficult for your content to be stolen.

IMPORTANT: There is no fool-proof method to prevent visitors from saving images from your website. Anything posted on a public website can be accessed by the public.

Click through each topic for more information on protecting your content.

Protecting Images in the Photo Gallery Application

In your Photo Gallery app settings, you have a few options available to make it more complicated for visitors to save your images.

One key setting is how you choose to display images in photo albums. “Slideshow View” will rotate your images in a simple animated slideshow. Setting the albums in your Gallery to default to “Slideshow View” will hide direct links to the image page in most browsers.

NOTE: Selecting “Slideshow View” will prevent thumbnails for “Most Recent Images” from appearing in the associated app feed.

The “Social Gallery” setting allows members and other visitors to leave comments on your Gallery images. With this setting, an individual page is created for each image.

The setting for “Who can download photos” is how you can disable right-clicking anywhere on the image. Simply change the setting from “anyone” to “disabled.”

NOTE: Changing this setting to “disabled” will not disable the “full size” option on the image page. Visitors will still be able to right-click from the pop-up window when viewing “full size.”

Watermarking

The best option currently is to watermark your images. This is a method photographers and designers use to brand their images and demonstrate ownership. While this will not prevent the actual steps someone would take to save the image, it can sometimes devalue an image to potential thieves, as they find that an image with branding on it is not useful. Additionally, if the image shows up on another website, since you have watermarked it, the image will serve as promotion for your business.

For more on watermarking, please check out the following article:
"How to Watermark Your Photos"

Using the No Right-Click Script

Another commonly used tool is to disable right-click on your Normal Site Pages by implementing a script. However, this method is not 100% effective since there are ways around it.

• Using the right-click button on a mouse simply launches a context menu, the same menu that can be launched with a key on the keyboard (usually it’s to the right of the spacebar). Therefore, someone that wants to view a page’s source code can still do so without the aid of a mouse.
• Most, if not all, browsers allow visitors to simply click on an image and drag it directly into the address bar. This will take a visitor to the image’s direct location and away from any right-click scripts that have been coded into a page. The only way this won’t happen is if the image also serves as a hyperlink.
• Browsers that allow extensions, like Firefox for example, can provide visitors with the ability to install a feature that allow them to view the page’s source code, allowing the visitor to successfully view the locations of the images they want.

You can find a number of "no right-click" scripts using the following search query:
"No Right-Click"

 

IMPORTANT: Implementing the use of any third-party custom codes or scripts is at your own risk. Webs Product Support teams will not support, encourage or assist with the usage of scripts. Use of code requires the HTML module, which is a Premium feature. Click here to upgrade your site with a Premium package.

Additional Notes

One of the simplest ways to snag an image is to simply create a screenshot. This feature is built into every operating system and there is no way to prevent someone from taking a screenshot of your website.

The content you add to your webpage, especially if it is related to your business, is your creative, personal, professional property and responsibility. It is useful to consider how much you want to share online.