Are you seeking a strategy to stop WordPress from stealing your images?
Photographers encounter image theft frequently and on a regular basis. Anyone can easily copy text and photos from the internet. It is crucial to safeguard your original work because of this.
In this essay, we’ll go through 4 strategies for protecting WordPress websites from image piracy.
About Image Theft and Copyright
There are universal and international laws governing copyright. The copyright of the original creator’s creative work is immediately transferred to them.
The stuff you are viewing is likely copyrighted even if they don’t explicitly state it on their WordPress website. This includes any type of content you see on the internet, such as pictures, text, movies, logos, and so on.
The issue is that text and photos can be duplicated with ease. Many people believe that using a stolen image on their own website would go unnoticed.
Stealing someone else’s work is not only against the law, but is also unethical. Public domain and royalty-free photos are available in numerous locations.
Even if it is pleasant when others exploit your work for their own endeavors, it may occasionally be extremely upsetting to witness flagrant disdain for your rights.
Although many techniques discourage and prevent picture theft on a WordPress website, there is no way to stop individuals from taking your photographs totally.
The four most popular techniques to secure your photos in WordPress are listed below.
1. Turn off right-click
It is simple for a user to download images from your website by performing a right-click and choosing “save image as.” You can make it more difficult for an average user to steal your image by disabling right-click on your website.
The right-click functionality on photos in WordPress can be disabled using the following two plugins.
The top WordPress gallery plugin available is called Envira Gallery. Envira has a ton of additional functions in addition to assisting you in creating stunning image galleries. The protection of images is one of these characteristics.
Go to Envira Gallery » Addons by simply clicking on it in your WordPress admin panel. Next, locate the “Protection” add-on, install it, and then turn it on.
Now use Envira Gallery to build a new image gallery.
Click the “Misc” tab when creating your gallery, then scroll down to the Image Protection Settings. The option to enable image protection can be found. Check this box to save your gallery and go on.
A popup warning that will show up if a user tries to copy the image can also be enabled.
This image gallery is now available to add anywhere on your WordPress website. Right-clicking on photos will be immediately disabled.
You may disable right-clicking on your WordPress website with WP Content Copy Protection, a free WordPress plugin.
The plugin by default disables right-clicking across your entire page. You can, however, turn off protection for particular pages, posts, and categories.
The protection settings for logged-in users and admin users are also under your control. When a user tries to right-click an image, there is also the option to display a message.
2. Add a watermark to your WordPress images.
For many websites that sell stock pictures, watermarks appear to be very effective. Your photographs or images could not appear their best, which is obviously a drawback.
Watermarks can be used tastefully, though. The idea is to prevent others from copying your photographs while still maintaining their aesthetic appeal.
Method 1 Utilizing Envira Gallery
Watermarking is an add-on that comes with Envira Gallery. To use this extension, Envira Gallery Plus license is a minimum requirement.
Installing and turning on the Envira Gallery plugin is simple. You must go to Envira Gallery » Addons after activation and select the Watermarking addon. Install and activate it next.
You will see the new ‘Watermarking’ tab in gallery settings when making a gallery or updating an existing gallery.
More options will show up if you select the checkbox next to the “Enabled Watermarking” option. Then, submit a watermark for your photos, determine its location and margin, and decide whether or not to apply it to already-existing photos.
Method 2: Using Easy Watermark Plugin
The Easy Watermark plugin is the alternative. Installing and turning on the Easy Watermark plugin is simple. If you need help, then please visit our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activation, you can modify the plugin settings by going to the Tools page for Easy Watermark.
Enter the title for your watermark after clicking the “Add New Watermark” button. Then you may select the text in the “Watermark” field by clicking the “Text” tab.
The text’s font, size, color, angle, and opacity can all be altered. In addition, you can modify the alignment of the text and create applying rules.
You can add an image for your watermark by selecting the “Image” option. Your watermark will show up on your photographs after you click the “Save” button.
3. Turn off image hotlinking in WordPress
Using the original source to load the photographs is another typical method of stealing them from websites. Without your consent, third-party websites will display the image after it has loaded from your servers.
Additionally, this increases bandwidth utilization and server load.
Here’s how to stop someone from using your WordPress website’s photographs as hotlinks.
Simply add this code to the.htaccess file in the root directory of your WordPress website.
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#disable hotlinking of images with forbidden or custom image optionRewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?wpbeginner.com [NC]RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L] |
Don’t forget to substitute your own domain name for wpbeginner.com.
This code prevents hotlinking while enabling picture viewing on your website and in search results.
4. Display Copyright Notifications on Your WordPress Site
The addition of a copyright notice to your website might also deter picture theft. Simply add the following plain text or HTML copyright disclaimer to your theme’s footer file:
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<p>© 2009-2016 wpexpertpro.com</p> |
The drawback of this is that you’ll need to update this code annually. Including a dynamic copyright notice in WordPress is a preferable strategy. Simply add this code to a site-specific plugin or the functions.php file of your theme.
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function wpb_copyright() {global $wpdb;$copyright_dates = $wpdb->get_results("SELECTYEAR(min(post_date_gmt)) AS firstdate,YEAR(max(post_date_gmt)) AS lastdateFROM$wpdb->postsWHEREpost_status = 'publish'");$output = '';if($copyright_dates) {$copyright = "© " . $copyright_dates[0]->firstdate;if($copyright_dates[0]->firstdate != $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate) {$copyright .= '-' . $copyright_dates[0]->lastdate;}$output = $copyright;}return $output;} add_shortcode('copyright','wpb_copyright');add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode'); |
This code identifies the initial and most recent dates that you published content on your blog. The dynamic copyright notice is then output.
To display a copyright notice, you must add the shortcode [copyright] to any post, page, or text widget on your website. This code may also be used in the footer of your theme.
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<?php echo wpb_copyright(); ?> |
Now, if you’re unsure if your photos have been stolen, here’s how to find out.
How to Determine Whether a Photo Is Stolen
Google Images is the best resource for determining whether a photograph is a fake. Although there are many other expensive solutions available, Google is free to use and can tell you right away if someone else is utilizing your photographs.
Visit the Google Images page and then click the camera symbol to get started.
Your image can then be uploaded or its URL pasted into Google Images.
The image’s information, potentially connected queries, and some visually comparable images will now appear on Google.
The area labeled “Pages that feature matching images” can be found, though, if you scroll down. You can check here to see if any websites are utilizing your image without your permission.
Once you’ve identified the person or people who have stolen your photographs, you can contact them and ask them to properly credit you for your work. You can also send a takedown notice to Google directly.
We hoped that this information will assist you in safeguarding your photos and avoiding photo piracy in WordPress.
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