The 5 Minutes Task You Need to Protect Your Blog

The 5 Minute Task You Need to Protect Your Blog

Blogging and Business by Dia

I work hard on my blog and when I say “work” I mean work. Anyone who blogs knows how much work goes into a having a blog. I can say in the last 15 months since starting AllTheThingsIDo.com I’ve only a hand full of days where some blogging activity didn’t take place. When you dedicate so much of your time and yourself into something, of course, you want to protect all that work.
Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more reports on blogger Facebook groups and social media platforms about bloggers having their contents stolen and used by other “bloggers.”

Blogger Facebook Groups 101

[bctt tweet=”Imagine the horror of someone stealing your content & putting their name on it! ” username=”Diadoll”]

Can you imagine horror of some lazy person stealing the content you wrote poured your heart into and putting their name on it! Some people aren’t just changing a few words and phrases but literally copying, pasting and then posting someone else’s original content of their own website. In fact in some cases not just stealing a post or two but completely stealing every single post and graphic with the only differences being their name and maybe the name of the blog.
It is not acceptable!
You work hard on your blog so do everything you can to protect it. There is something so simple you can do to make it harder for people to take your content. I was shocked all I needed was to download the content protection plugin. All I had to do was install and activate the plugin no need for coding or copy and pasting HTML. It pretty much “click, click, done” and now my page is protected from thieves.

[bctt tweet=”You work hard on your blog so do everything you can to protect it. ” username=”Diadoll”]

I have a WordPress blog and us the free plugin WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click by wp-buy to protect my content from right clicking.

These content thieves are pretty lazy (obviously) so while this doesn’t totally stop someone from retyping your content it does make it harder for them to copy and paste your content into their blog. Which may deter them from targeting you and your awesome content?

 

4 Tips to Build Deeper Connections With Your Social Media Followers

Other tips:

  • Trademark your images in some way. A lot of users use watermarks to protect their photos.
  • Randomly do searches for the titles and certain phrases in of your posts.
  • Remember that there are a lot of bloggers out there and there is a good chance that others have written about the same topics as you. Don’t go around accusing people of plagiarism just because you both have a post titled, “5 Tips to improve your blog.” It doesn’t mean they stole from you. Actually, read the post. If the posts closely match up then look at other posts to see if there seems to be a pattern in similar posts.

Do you protect your content or photos? How? What plugins do you use? If you don’t use WordPress share how you protect your content. Have you ever had someone steal your content? Have you ever been wrongly accused?

Update 7.12.16:

First to answer a question I’ve seen a few times. This plugin doesn’t prevent screenshot, which as we all know can be used to grab photos, so some sort of watermark is probably your best bet.

Second, I received a comment about how one reader doesn’t use a plugin like this anymore and pointing out that it does disable the ability for readers to paste links into my comments section.  I allow visitors to link their names to their URL and provide multiple ways to get in contact with me if they have a link they would like to send me specifically. Before I enabled this plugin I didn’t typically approval links in comments because most of the time it’s spammy. Also most of the bloggers I personally know use Google Chrome which automatically populates things like name, email and url in the provided spaces.

I am not claiming to know it all.

I am also not claiming this is the best way or the only way.

Like in all of my blogging posts I’m saying it’s the best way for me and sharing it with anyone who may not have heard of this option, they can do further research and see if it’s for them. As I stated above this isn’t going to totally protect your blog content from being stolen, it is just one option for safe guarding it. If someone really likes a post and wants to refer back to some of the content they can always bookmark it or save the link.

I appreciate people coming to the blog, reading, commenting and sharing but this is supposed to be a safe place. I totally agree with free speech but I pay for this domaine and while any advice I can share to make a more informed decision is welcome I don’t need anything negative when my intentions are to be helpful in anyway I can and to provide a fun, relatable and positive site.

I love you all and want us all to kick butt, so sorry if this bothers you, just had to say it.

62 comments

  1. Sarah

    Does this also prevent people from taking pictures? While I hate the idea of someone copying my pictures and dragging them onto their own site, I also want sites like Buzzfeed to be able to use them in round ups when possible! I’d never heard of the app though, pretty cool!

  2. Darryon Beeson

    Had no idea about this, I’m so thankful you shared! Blogging is serious work, and I don’t have time to have people stealing my stuff. Huge no no. Using this plugin ASAP

  3. erica avery

    so needed. I just was thinking I need to trademark my pics. But first I need to get better at taking pics lol!

  4. Katie

    For awhile I was really good about trademarking my images and I’ll be honest, lately I’ve been pretty terrible about it. 🙁 I really need to get back into it as I know it’s so important!

  6. Riley

    Totally agree! It doesn’t take that long and does a lot in the long run.

  7. Nellwyn

    Great tips! The idea of someone stealing a blog post is infuriating!

  9. Amberly

    I love your last tip especially! I’ve seen people copy content, very obviously, but I’ve also seen people accuse someone of something when it’s just a simple case of both have similar ideas!

  10. candy

    Thanks Dia, this is so good to know and how to protect everything.

  11. andrea

    I have had someone steal my content before and it was awful. I wish I had your tips before I started blogging. Great info:)

  12. Gina Leslie

    Thanks for posting! Sometimes we forget how important it is to protect our content.

  13. Elaine McKellips

    Thanks for the tip on that plugin! I’ll have to install ASAP! xx, E

  14. Amanda

    I had no idea there was a plug-in for this. Brilliant and one of the easiest things to do. As a grad student, plagiarism is a huge deal and all of my content comes from research and experience. If I research it, I will cite it but I know not everyone is that way. Thanks for sharing!

  15. Dia

    Yeah. I would say give it a try or look into it more.

  16. Dia

    Hope you found it helpful!

  17. Dia

    We may as well do anything we can.

  18. Rachel Lynn

    This is so important! You have no idea what someone else might be doing with your information. The more you’re protected, the better!

  19. Krista Dial

    I’d never heard of this plugin, Dia, but I’m going to check it out! My heart would sink if I saw my blog content on someone else’s blog as if it were their own…

  21. Jenny

    Great post! I had no idea there was a plug in like this. I will definitely have to check it out.

    xoxo, Jenny

  22. Michelle

    Great advice!! I always worry about this! thanks so much for sharing

  23. Cori

    I also asked a Copyright lawyer at a conference once and she said at the end of your posts if you put the copyright symbol, your full name, and the date the content was created (not posted), that will hold up. No, this won’t actually stop people from right click and copying, but your copyright is noted and can stand legally if need be.

  24. Joanna

    Such a great idea. I didn’t know about this plugin but it is so important to protect our content as bloggers and website owners.

  25. Kristen Kavan

    oh these are such good tips. another reason i need to switch to wordpress ASAP. Thanks for this great reminder.

  26. Denay DeGuzman

    What a great reminder that there are content thieves out there ready to take advantage of other bloggers’ hard work. I’m definitely going to check into that plug-in. It sounds like a great idea. Something else that you can do is to run a check on your content through either a free or paid service like PlagiarismChecker, Copyscape, or CopyLeaks. It is a bit of a hassle in that you have to check each URL. But I’d start with your top 10 posts that get the most traffic.

  27. Kari Jonard

    Great tip! I went to copy and paste the plugin name so I didn’t have to retype it and well gee haha. The whole point of this post was protecting your page so people can’t copy!

  28. Christie

    Ugh! I had an issue with this a year or so back, someone was literally copy and pasting my entire articles – same wording, same pictures, same title. Laziness had a whole new meaning aha. I only found out because I fellow blogger stumbled upon these copied posts and let me know. SO bad.
    I’ve heard there’s some program you can use to search if there’s pieces of your work floating around the internet in someone else’s name. I’ve been meaning to look in to it for so long now.

    Christie’s Take on Life. xx

  29. Jenny

    I didn’t know there was a plugin that could do that. That’s pretty awesome!

  30. Liz Mays

    I’ve had my content scraped before, and it’s more than annoying! Since I went to a truncated feed, it has helped a lot. I also put a copyright in my feed footer.

  31. GiGi Eats

    UGH I NEED TO FIGURE OUT WHOIS.COM

    I had a random blog reader TEXT MESSAGE me today because apparently, my deets are on that site!!! I asked how I could hide such info and apparently I HAVE TO PAY FOR MY PRIVACY!!! Unacceptable!

  32. Dia

    Yes girl check that out! My host company protects my info on whois but I haven’t looked in a while.

  33. Dia

    I hope you don’t have to deal with that again 🙁

  34. Roxy

    I don’t think I’ve ever though much about protecting my content. Majority of my pictures are photos of me or stock images anyway, but this def. has me thinking that I should get in the habit of adding a watermark especially as I improve the food/recipe portion of my blog.

  36. Leslie Rossi | alifewellconsumed

    wow never heard of whois.com and now will check it.

  37. Dia

    Yeah make sure your personal info isn’t out there.

  38. Dia

    I hope you haven’t. <3

  39. Dia

    Sometimes diet companies will even steal people’s before and afters claiming it was a result of their product smdh

  40. Dia

    Haha sorry Kari. Use bookmark lady!

  41. Dia

    Yeah you should check it out.

  42. Dia

    I’m so sorry that happened I hope it got fixed.

  43. Dia

    Great suggestion I’m adding it to my list 🙂

  44. Dia

    Good luck Kristen.

  45. Dia

    Sweet thanks for the tip!

  46. Dia

    We work too hard not to.

  47. Dia

    Thanks for stopping by.

  48. Dia

    Thanks Jenny

  49. Dia

    It happens more than we realize 🙁

  50. Dia

    Hope it helps.

  51. Dia

    I’m so sorry that happened to you.

  52. Dia

    You can’t be too careful.

  53. Dia

    Thanks Candy.

  54. Dia

    Right! It’s like get your facts straight first lol

  55. Dia

    Hope it helps Esther.

  56. Dia

    Totally agree.

  57. Dia

    Exactly.

  58. Dia

    Hope it helps!

  59. Dia

    You work so hard. Protect your stuff!

  60. Dia

    Me too!

  61. Dia

    Hope you find it useful 🙂

  62. Dia

    People can still screen shot things I just find it makes copying and pasting your content harder.

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