6 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins to Stop Content Theft
Content theft is a type of cybercrime, and it often only gets found when a website with stolen content appears on a search engine result page. This article will share the top 6 plugins that work with WordPress to help prevent content theft. These WordPress content security plugins can assist marketers in fending off content pirates by securing text, photos, and other information on a website.It is impossible to prevent users from taking content from a WordPress website; any content posted online is always vulnerable to theft. What can be done, though, is to make it far more challenging for content to be taken without consent.
How Do Most People Steal WordPress Content?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is an online database that includes information about each item of content a website has published. It is one of the most popular methods for others to copy content from a website.
If the full content of a website’s content is in the RSS feed, anyone can easily copy content by pulling it indirectly from the RSS feed.
Some plugins can delay or block the feed to stop this from happening (or at least make it more difficult). Or, add custom material to the feed using the majority of SEO plugins, which at the very least, enables you to link to your website.
Besides content, users can also easily download and use the images on their websites. Or, in some circumstances, they might simply hotlink the photo from the server. One way to prevent others from using them would be by watermarking photographs and turning off image hotlinking.
What WordPress Content Protection Strategies To Avoid?
Avoid using the following content protection techniques:
- Disable right-clicking
- Disable copy and paste.
These tactics can frustrate visitors when browsing a website, and anyone can quickly get around these limitations with basic technical skills.
Six Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins
Scraping a site’s material from the RSS feed is a common form of low-level content theft. Thanks to the various WordPress RSS feed auto-poster plugins, it is straightforward. These plugins certainly have a lot of appropriate uses; however, it is also simple to misuse them for content theft. To use it, disable the site’s RSS feed.
Although anyone could still set up a unique tool to scrape a site’s content, most websites will find it easier to find another website with an RSS feed enabled.
Install the free Disable Feeds plugin to make this simple. The plugin has yet to see an update in at least five years, but thanks to its straightforward code base, it works perfectly.
It is recommended to disable full text in RSS feeds, not to disable the RSS feed entirely. This can be found in the WordPress function by heading to Settings → Reading.
The advantages are that it prevents the majority of low-level automated content scraping (which is how most people steal content). The price and the code are free. However, some readers who subscribe via RSS might find it annoying.
Another option is to delay the RSS feed rather than disabling it. This option will prevent other users from copying new content recently added to the RSS feed and publishing them on their website and then having Google index them before they index the original content. Google might consider it to be the actual content’s source.
Ensure that Google indexes the material on your website before anyone else can post it by delaying your RSS feed.
Simply by using the free Delay RSS Feeds plugin. Install the plugin and navigate Settings → Reading to set the feed delay. It is recommended setting to at least several hours.
The code of this plugin is simple, so even though it has been a while since it has been changed, it could still function well.
The advantages of Delaying the RSS feed allow Google more time to index content, and readers can still subscribe using RSS. However, that note that anyone can still access the content once it is published.
Disable right-clicking and copying and pasting on the website with the help of the free plugin WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click.
The following content protection features are available:
- Disable right-click.
- Disable keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting (such as Ctrl + C).
Additionally, a premium edition is available with additional features like alert messages when a user tries to right-click on an image and more sophisticated safety measures.
The benefits of these plugins are that people will find it more difficult to steal your content, and the Pro edition includes JavaScript- and CSS-based protection techniques. However, these features might annoy website visitors and affect their user experience when typical keyboard shortcuts are disallowed.
A freemium content protection plugin, Better Material Protector, has almost every security feature conceivable, including some capabilities to guard against higher-level content theft.
Better Content Protector offers 15 distinct content protection modules in total:
- Disables the right-click menu
- Right-click menu restriction
- Copy protection for content
- Image download guard
- Video download guard
- Protect audio files
- Defend development tools
- Check out the source code shield
- Disable the JavaScript shield
- Printing shield
- Protect Copy Enabler Extension
- RSS feeds protector
- Hotlinking Defense
- e-mail address shield
- Protect phone number
These features can frustrate visitors because they can be a little aggressive, as it can cause frequent lagging. But this plugin offers many alternatives for a thorough strategy to safeguard content.
The advantages are that almost all content protection features are included in this package and can go beyond fundamental strategies like copy protection and right-clicking. However, users would have to use the Pro version to access most of the top modules.
Image Watermark prevents WordPress image theft by applying a text or image watermark to all photos: Both new photos uploaded and older images already inside the Media Library.
Additionally, it has a function that disables right-clicking on photos to make downloading them a little more challenging.
The benefits include compatibility with both new and old photos and the ability to change the opacity and position of the watermark. On the other hand, watermarks cannot be removed, so backup your images. Consider using a real-time dynamic image optimisation plugin like Optimal to keep original photos.
WordProof Timestamp is an intriguing plugin that uses Blockchain technology to enable marketers to demonstrate the ownership of original work.
Although it does not stop content theft, it demonstrates the work’s ownership, which is significant if there is a need to file a copyright complaint.
Additionally, the creator is working to raise awareness so that search engines might eventually use these types of timestamps.
This can be a good option using Blockchain to show the content’s original author publicly.
It provides blockchain-verifiable evidence of the owner of the material, and visitors are more inclined to believe so when visiting the web page. However, that note that it does not prevent material theft. The plugin allows a timestamp of ten pieces of content per month on the free plan.
How do I secure the WordPress site’s content?
While a professional content scraper cannot be stopped, most low-level automated content coping can be controlled by changing the settings on your RSS feed. Make it more difficult for readers to get the full text of materials by using plugins to include links to the website and the RSS feed.
What can I do to prevent WordPress image theft?
Some webmasters prefer to prevent right clicks on photos, but content scrapers can quickly work around this.
While it is impossible to completely prevent anyone from stealing WordPress images, it is possible to make it more difficult by turning off image hotlinking and watermarking images.
