In an age where “content is king,” it’s important that you protect the content on your website. You don’t want low-quality websites to steal your content, allowing them to rank on Google and not you.
Ripping off content is not okay and doing it without attribution for your hard work is simply not okay in the digital world. This includes thieves scraping RSS feeds for fresh, new content to publish it on their sites without any attribution and claiming it’s their own. Also, you might want to protect some exclusive content for registered members and hide it from non-registered users.
Content theft can also hurt your brand’s credibility and cheapen your reputation, so it’s something to take seriously. While there’s no real way to stop plagiarism, there are certain steps you can take in order to protect your website’s content.
This will help ensure that your content stays yours and unique. Content theft is basically when someone else uses your work without permission. This includes written text, videos, photos and more. The most common form of this is plagiarism, which is copying and pasting content from one site to another without any attribution.
To protect your digital content you’ll need to use a content protection plugin for WordPress. These plugins will help from anyone else taking your content so that it remains yours and only yours. Plugins are great for those who aren’t techy since they can easily be installed into your WordPress site with ease!
Originally Published Mar 20 2019, updated Mar 14 2023
1. Password Protected
Total downloads: 300,000+
Five Star Ratings: 90+
A very simple way to quickly password protect your WordPress site with a single password.
Features:
- Password protect your WordPress site with a single password.
- Option to allow access to feeds.
- Option to allow administrators access without entering password.
2. WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 900+
This WordPress plugin protects the post content from being copied by any other web site author, you don’t want your content to spread without your permission!!
The plugin will keep your posts and home page protected by multiple techniques (JavaScript + CSS), this techniques does not found in any other WordPress plugin and you will own it for free with this plugin.
Features:
- Protect your content from selection and copy. this plugin makes protecting your posts extremely simple without yelling at your readers
- No one can save images from your site.
- No right click or context menu.
- Show alert message, Image Ad or HTML Ad on save images or right click.
- Disable the following keys CTRL+A, CTRL+C, CTRL+X,CTRL+S or CTRL+V.
- Advanced and easy to use control panel.
- No one can right click images on your site if you want
3. Paid Memberships Pro
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 560+
Paid Memberships Pro is a popular WordPress plugin that enables website owners to easily create and manage membership sites. The plugin is designed to offer a comprehensive solution for managing subscriptions, memberships, and other aspects of your site’s content.
With Paid Memberships Pro, you can create multiple membership levels, each with its own set of features, pricing, and access restrictions. You can also set up recurring billing for memberships and accept payments via popular payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net.
The plugin includes a range of features for managing members and their subscriptions, including member management tools, payment history, and reporting tools. You can also restrict access to content based on membership levels, and customize messages and notifications for members.
Paid Memberships Pro is highly customizable, with options for creating custom registration and profile fields, as well as customizing the membership checkout experience. The plugin is also compatible with many popular WordPress themes and integrates with other popular plugins such as WooCommerce and BuddyPress.
Paid Memberships Pro is a freemium plugin with a free core version available, as well as paid add-ons for additional features and functionality. With over 100,000 active installations and a 4.5-star rating, it’s a popular choice for website owners looking to monetize their content through membership subscriptions.
4. Advanced Access Manager
Total downloads: 100,000+
Five Star Ratings: 400+
Advanced Access Manager is all you need to manage access to your website frontend and backend for any user, role or visitors.
Features:
- Access & Security Policy allows you to define who, when, how and under what conditions your website resources can be accessed;
- Content access control on frontend, backend and API sides to posts, pages, custom post types, categories, custom hierarchical taxonomies and CPTs for any role, user and visitors;
- Roles & capabilities management with the ability to create new roles and capabilities, edit, clone or delete existing;
- Access control to backend area including backend menu, toolbar, meta boxes & widgets;
- Access control to RESTful & XML-RPC APIs;
- Developer friendly API so it can be used by other developers to work with AAM core;
- All necessary features to set up smooth user flow during login, logout, access denied even, 404 etc;
- Manage Backend Menu. Manage access to the backend menu for any user or role;
- Manage Roles & Capabilities. Manage all your WordPress role and capabilities;
- All necessary set of tools to manage JWT authentication Ultimate guide to WordPress JWT Authentication;
- Create temporary user accounts. Create and manage temporary user accounts;
- Manage Admin Toolbar. Filter out unnecessary items from the top admin toolbar for any role or user;
- Backend Lockdown. Restrict access to your website backend side for any user or role. Find out more from How to lockdown WordPress backend article;
- Secure Login Widget & Shortcode. Drop AJAX login widget or shortcode anywhere on your website. Find out more from How does AAM Secure Login works article;
- Ability to enable/disable RESTful and XML-RPC APIs;
- Manage access to RESTful or XML-RPC individual endpoints for any role, user or visitors;
- JWT authentication. Authenticate user with WordPress RESTful API and use received JWT token for further requests;
- Login with URL. For more information check WordPress: Temporary User Account, Login With URL & JWT Token article;
- Content Filter. Filter or replace parts of your content with AAM shortcodes;
- Login/Logout Redirects. Define custom login and logout redirect for any user or role;
- 404 Redirect. Redefine where the user should be redirected when the page does not exist;
- Access Denied Redirect. Define custom redirect for any role, user or visitors when access is denied for the restricted area on your website;
- Manage Metaboxes & Widgets. Filter out restricted or unnecessary meta boxes and widgets on both frontend and backend for any user, role or visitors. Find out more from How to hide WordPress metaboxes & widgets article;
- Multisite support. Sync access settings across your network or even restrict none-members from accessing one of your sites;
- Multiple role support. Finally, AAM supports multiple roles per user WordPress access control for users with multiple roles;
5. PPWP – WordPress Password Protect Page Plugin
Total downloads: 30,000+
Five Star Ratings: 240+
Password Protect WordPress (PPWP) plugin offers a powerful and all-in-one solution to secure your website with passwords.
Whether you want to password protect WordPress categories, WooCommerce products, a few posts, or your entire website, the PPWP plugin will help you do so with ease.
6. User Access Manager
Total downloads: 30,000+
Five Star Ratings: 100+
The plugin allows you to manage the access of your content. This is useful if you need a member area, a private section at your blog or you want that other people can write at your blog but not everywhere.
Including all post type (post, pages etc.), taxonomies (categories etc.) and files by creating user groups. Just assign the content you want to restrict und and your registered users which should have a access to a group. From now on the content is only accessible and writable for the specified group.
Features:
- User groups
- Set separate access for readers and editors
- Set access by user groups
- Set default user groups
- Set time based access
- User-defined post type (posts, pages etc.) title (if no access)
- User-defined post type (posts, pages etc.) text (if no access)
- Optional login form (if no access)
- User-defined comment text (if no access)
- Hide complete post types (posts, pages etc.)
- Hide elements in the navigation
- Redirecting users to other pages (if no access)
- Recursive locking of content
- Limited access to uploaded files
- Full integrated at the admin panel
- Multilingual support
- Also protect your rss feeds
- Give access by IP-address
- Plugin-Api to use the User Access Manager in your on plugins or extend other plugins
7. WP Content Copy Protection
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 160+
WP Content Copy Protection is a simple, yet effective plugin that uses an array of aggressive techniques in protecting your online content from being stolen.
Features:
- Disables right click context menu on all content (except href links)
- Disables text selection (globally) on PC and mobile devices
- Disables text and image drag/drop/save on PC and mobile devices
- Basic image protection (image link URL’s are automatically removed)
- Copy methods disabled from onscreen keyboard and shortcut context key
- Secures your uploads directory and sub-directories from public access
- Disables right click and save function on default video and audio embeds
- Javascript validation (displays error message when disabled in user browser)
- Disables keyboard copy controls (CTRL A, C, X) – Windows only
- Disables ‘Source view’, ‘Save Page’, and ‘Print’ key functions
- Disables f shortcut key for accessing developer tools to view source code
- No obtrusive popups or alert messages as they are known to defame your site
- No negative side-effects on your SEO (search engines can read your content)
- This is a non resource-intensive plugin that works silently in the background
- No configuration, customization or coding needed. Simply plug in and leave
8. Restrict User Access – Membership & Content Protection
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 80+
The Restrict User Access plugin is a powerful WordPress plugin that allows website owners to control user access to specific parts of their website. With this plugin, you can easily restrict user access to pages, posts, custom post types, menus, widgets, and even individual media files.
The plugin offers a variety of access control options, including restricting access by user role, user ID, password protection, and IP address. You can also choose to redirect restricted users to a custom URL or display a custom message explaining why they don’t have access.
The Restrict User Access plugin is highly customizable, with options for setting up multiple access levels and customizing the visibility of individual items. You can also use shortcodes to display content to specific users or user roles.
One of the most useful features of the Restrict User Access plugin is the ability to restrict access to content based on user metadata. This allows you to restrict access based on custom fields, such as membership status or subscription level.
The plugin is regularly updated and maintained, ensuring compatibility with the latest version of WordPress. It also has a user-friendly interface and is easy to set up and use, even for non-technical users.
9. Secure Copy Content Protection and Content Locking
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 40+
Secure Copy Content Protection is a plugin aimed at protecting web content from being plagiarized.
As soon as Copy Protection plugin is activated it disables the right click, copy paste, content selection and copy shortcut keys on your website thus preventing content theft as well as web scraping, which are very popular nowadays. Besides all the abovementioned copy methods Copy Protection allows to disable inspect elements and provides a protected site, where no copyright infringement may occur.
Full Features:
- Content copy protection
- Notification text
- Disable left click
- Disable right click
- Disable Developer Tools
- Disable Drag/Drop
- Disable F12
- Disable CTRL+C
- Disable CTRL+V
- Disable CTRL+X
- Disable CTRL+S
- Disable CTRL+A
- Disable CTRL+U
- Disable CTRL+F
- Disable CTRL+P
- Disable CTRL+H
- Disable CTRL+L
- Disable CTRL+K
- Disable ALT+D
- Disable F6
- Style settings
- Block content with password
- Subscribe to view content
- Mailchimp integration
10. Disable Right Click For WP
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 30+
A WordPress plugin designed to help website owners protect their website’s content from being copied or downloaded. The plugin disables the right-click function on your website, preventing visitors from accessing the context menu that typically allows them to copy or save images and text.
Features:
- Disable Right Click.
- Disable View Source With Shortcut (CTRL+U).
- Disable Inspect Element With Shortcut (F12/CTRL+SHIFT+I/CTRL+SHIFT+K).
- Disable Copy (CTRL+C), Cut (CTRL+X), Paster( CTRL+V).
- Disable Text Selection.
- Disable Image drag-n-drop.
Conclusion:
Since many content protection plugins for WordPress are available on the web, it might be hard to figure out which ones are best. To help, here’s my list of the best free content protection plugins:
The web can be a ruthless place. To ensure your content is safe, you’ll want to use a content protection plugin for WordPress. This way, thieves can’t copy your content to use for their own purposes!
You might also find more content protection plugins on our website.
