How to Disable Right Click on WordPress Website

Blogging is the best way to share your ideas, but what if someone copies your content? Your hardly created can be stolen in a few clicks. Protecting your website content is crucial in today’s digital landscape. One way to enhance security and prevent unauthorized use of your content is by disabling right-click functionality on your WordPress site. This article will explore various methods to disable right-clicking and discuss the importance of balancing user experience with content protection.

Methods of Disabling Right Click

There are two primary ways to disable right-click on your WordPress site: using plugins and adding custom JavaScript code. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks, so let’s examine them in detail.

Disable Right click using JavaScript Code (without Plugin).

In this method, we have to add the following javascript code into the WordPress theme file. To do that, scroll to WordPress dashboard > appearance> edit theme. Select the footer.php file to add the following code in the website’s footer section.

Find the </body> tag in footer.php, then paste the code provided just above the closing of the body tag. Please note, this is footer.php and Not function.php.

<script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery(document).ready(function () {
        //Disable cut copy paste
        jQuery('body').bind('cut copy paste', function (e) {
            e.preventDefault();
        });
        //Disable mouse right click
        jQuery("body").on("contextmenu",function(e){
            return false;
        });
    });
    </script>

Save the footer.php file, and delete the cache (if any) to load the script. This code will prevent right-clicking on every page of your website. So the website visitors are not able to perform right-click or copy-paste functions.

We will also discuss its impact on user experience and best practices. Of course, if we disable right-clicking on our web pages. It will annoy users who want to save content for future reference. And also, some users have a behavior of selecting content with the mouse and reading that. Overall it will impact on Search Engine Optimization of the website.

It will also protect the content from being copied by an average user. We added the javascript code in the footer section to avoid page speed issues.

You can create a child theme and place the code to avoid changes in future theme updates.

If you want to block a specific part, read how to block right-click for a particular section of your page.

Disable Right Click Using a Plugin.

You can also disable right-click with the help of a Plugin. Install and activate WordPress Plugin WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click for this.

The plugin will disable Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Shift+I, and Ctrl+U, and protect the website from being copied. The plugin warns with a notice that the content is protected when someone right-clicks on your website. This feature is free with the plugin.

Limitations of disabling right click

While disabling right-click functionality can help protect your content, it’s essential to consider its limitations and potential impact on user experience:

Protecting your website content is crucial for maintaining your intellectual property and ensuring that your hard work is not easily duplicated or stolen. One way to enhance the security of your website is by disabling the right-click feature. While this can help prevent content theft and discourage image saving and hotlinking, it’s essential to understand the limitations of this method.

Impact on user experience

1. Inconvenience for legitimate users: Disabling right-click functionality can inconvenience users who rely on this feature for legitimate purposes. For example, many users right-click to open links in new tabs, save or bookmark pages, or access other browser context menu options. By disabling this feature, you may inadvertently make your website less user-friendly.
2. Frustration and potential loss of visitors: Users who find right-click functionality disabled on your website may become frustrated and leave your site searching for a more accessible alternative. This can result in a higher bounce rate and a potential loss of visitors.
3. Accessibility concerns for differently-abled users: Some users, particularly those with disabilities, may rely on right-click functionality to ease navigation or access essential browser features. Disabling right-click may inadvertently create accessibility barriers for these users.

Disabling the right-click can stop newbies from copying your content, but experts can still copy it easily from the webpage.

Ineffectiveness against determined users

1. Accessing content through browser developer tools: Disabling right-click functionality may deter casual content thieves. However, determined users can still access your content using browser developer tools, allowing them to inspect the source code and obtain direct URLs.
2. Inspecting the source code to find direct URLs: Users familiar with HTML and CSS can easily view the source code of your website and find direct URLs to your content, bypassing the right-click restriction.
3. Using screen capture tools to obtain images: Disabling right-click may prevent users from directly saving images from your website. But, they can still use screen capture tools or take screenshots to obtain your images without your permission.
4. Employing third-party software or browser extensions to bypass restrictions: Several browser extensions and third-party software can easily bypass right-click restrictions, allowing users to access and save your content despite your efforts to protect it.

False sense of security

1. Overestimating the effectiveness of right-click disabling: Relying solely on disabling right-click functionality may give you a false sense of security, causing you to overlook other, more compelling content protection measures.
2. Neglecting other content protection measures: Disabling right-click may lead you to neglect other content protection strategies that can provide more comprehensive protection for your website.
3. Overlooking the importance of legal frameworks and copyright enforcement: Disabling right-click does not replace the need for legal frameworks and copyright enforcement. It’s crucial to ensure that you have proper legal protections in place to safeguard your intellectual property.

That means disabling right-click; you’re making you are harming the user experience of the website. That will indirectly impact the website’s SEO. We will not recommend this method as it hampers the website’s organic reach.

Before implementing right-click restrictions, consider how the change will affect your users’ experience and whether it may lead to frustration or inconvenience. Consider the limitations of disabling right-click functionality and whether it will provide sufficient protection for your content.

How to Protect the content from theft.

You can interlink all the content of your website. So that when someone copies the content from your site, They also copy the links of your website. This will provide a backlink to your website and help Google analyze that the content is yours.

Suppose someone copies your content and publishes that on their website. Google will crawl, analyze and process for indexing. Google understands the content is scrapped in the data process and will never index scrapped content. However, if the content is internally linked with other content available, that site will also provide a backlink to your website.

There are a few other methods to protect the content.

• Display a proper Copyright Notice.
• Watermark images
• Protect the Feed of the WordPress website.

The copyright notice allows the user to copy content for personal use only. And watermark images help you identify your image. And watermark on the images will promote your brand.

Conclusion.

Disabling right-click functionality can provide some level of content protection, but it’s essential to understand its limitations. The impact on user experience, ineffectiveness against determined users, and potential incompatibilities with certain devices or browsers make it an imperfect solution.

To balance content protection and user experience, you should weigh the pros and cons of disabling right-click and consider implementing alternative strategies, such as watermarking, copyright notices, or DMCA takedown services. By adopting a combination of content protection measures, you can create a more robust and effective defense against unauthorized use while maintaining a positive user experience.

We hope you like this article if you’ve any questions regarding this. You are free to ask in the comment section below.