What is the best way to stop people stealing website content

I have had some problems in the past. What is the best way to stop people just viewing the code of your site and copying it?

 

There is none that isn't easy to bypass.

 

Is there not a way to lock a stylesheet or javascript files?

 

You can add a no right click script to your site but if folks are using IE, they can just fish the pages out of their temp folder.

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

but that won't stop them going to view source

 

Try "Protware" website. I don't know if it works but I've heard of it before and it appears to be very cheap. Let us know!

 

I was looking for something more in the coding like not allowing public access to css page etc..

 

I doubt you can stop it. Many ways to access and view the code.

 

It's impossible.

There are ways to make it feel fool-proof, but there really is no way to guarantee your work won't be stolen.

Believe me when I say nothing can stop a determined hacker. Flash / Javascript can all be hacked quite easily.

 

I don't know if this is spider friendly... but it claims to be browser friendly. If this doesn't work, I think you're out of luck.

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/encrypter.htm

 

That's exactly what I am thinking.
I've been using that for a long time in combination with no-right click.
It doesn't completely stop the ones who really want to view your source though, but it does blow away the majority of them.

P.S. You can encrypt the page as many times as you like... Try it out you'll see what I mean.

 

Ok, thanks for the help. I will have a look.

 

As far as I know, there's no way to stop people copying your source code.

 

Buy copyrights for your contents

 

Bear in mind there are a number of people that don't use javascript. what's going to happen if I sign onto your site with a handheld device ?

Think of it this way - the html file and the css are the bits that need to be sent to the screen. They are the instructions on how to render your website and define which parts are text and whatever.

If you try to hide,code,encrypt this information - what happens when google checks to see if your site is valid xhtml / css ? What happens to your website's accessibility for partially blind people ?

 

I don't really want to hide code. I just want to stop it being accessed. The css and javascript files are the most important to me as they create the page structure. Without those it looks like nothing.

 

make style.css chmod 755 ( i am nut sure if it have to be 755 or 655 ) and style.css will work on your website but when they try to see http://yoursite.com/style.css they would have not permission for that.

Note : if you are online you can not hide nothing, in a way or other they can take a look to your codes

 

just use .htaccess to block hotlink all other sites to use css and js ( similar to image)

 

You can't stop a person from viewing your html, css or javascript. The reason is if you did that, then no one could view your website in general. If your users can't view the html, css or javascript then neither can their web browser. Even if you find some way to block it in the browser, they can always go to their local cache and view the files.

However there is some things you can do to make it harder. There are tools that will put your css all on one line so it is hard to read. Look into minify css or minify code. There are also tools that will change function names of javascript to something really difficult to read like i21n312oih2dfq3ihh4bh2dfg343u4bhj23. It will do that for all functions so if you have a lot of functions or a lot of calls to a function it's very hard to read.

Honestly there is no reason to do any of this though. People are going to find a way to view your css, javascript and html and honestly there's no reason to even worry about it. I can't think of a single major website that cares. It's more about your content anyway.

 

Aye, I think the chmod'ing idea is exactly what you're looking for. Try CHMOD'ing your javascript and css file to 500 thats suposed to allow only the server/owner to read and excute the file. But anyone who's not logged into your ftp would not have permission to read the source.

This method would not work for the actual html page though because the surfer is required to be able to access the page (and thus be able to read the source).