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WPBeginner» Blog» Beginners Guide» 4 Ways to Prevent Image Theft in WordPress

4 Ways to Prevent Image Theft in WordPress

Last updated on February 22nd, 2019 by Editorial Staff
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4 Ways to Prevent Image Theft in WordPress

Image theft is a common problem that photographers deal with on a regular basis. Recently one of our readers asked if there was a way to prevent image theft in WordPress. In this article, we will share 4 ways to prevent image theft in WordPress powered websites.

Prevent Image Theft

About Image Theft and Copyright

Copyright laws are universal and applicable around the world. The original creator automatically becomes the copyright owner of their creative work. Even if they don’t mention it on their website, one should still assume that the content they are viewing is protected by copyright.

This includes images, text, videos, or any other form of content that you see on the web.

The problem is that images and text can be easily copied. Many people think that no one would notice if they stole an image and used it on their own website.

It is not only illegal but also unethical to steal other people’s work. There are many places where you can easily find royalty free and public domain images.

While it is flattering to see other people use your work in their own projects, sometimes it can be very frustrating to see a blatant disregard for your rights.

There is no way to completely stop people from stealing your images, but there are plenty of ways to discourage and prevent image theft on a WordPress website.

Here are the 4 most common ways to protect your images in WordPress.

1. Disable Right Click

Stealing images from your website is easy because a user can simply right click and select ‘save image as’ to download them. You can disable right click on your website and make it more difficult for an average user to steal your image.

Here are two plugins that you can use to disable right click on images in WordPress.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin in the market. Apart from helping you create beautiful image galleries, Envira comes with tons of other features as well. One of these features is image protection.

Simply go to Envira Gallery » Settings and click on the Addons tab. Scroll down to locate Protection Addon, and then install and activate it.

Image theft protection addon in Envira Gallery plugin for WordPress

Now create a new image gallery with Envira Gallery. If this is your first time, then take a look at how to easily create responsive image galleries in WordPress with Envira Gallery.

When creating your gallery, click on the Misc tab and scroll down to the bottom. You will find the option to enable image protection. Check this option and save your gallery.

Enabling image protection for a gallery with Envira Gallery

You can now add this image gallery anywhere on your WordPress site. It will automatically disable right click on images.

WP Content Copy Protection

This simple plugin is free and will disable right click on your WordPress site. The downside of using this plugin is that it disables right clicking on the whole page.

If you are using a slider or lightbox plugin, then sometimes this plugin will not work properly.

2. Use Watermark on Your WordPress Images

Watermarks seem to be working great for many stock photography websites. The obvious down side is that your photographs or images might not look the best.

However, you can add watermark tastefully. The goal is to keep the aesthetic appeal of your images while still discouraging people from stealing them.

Method 1: Using Envira Gallery

Again, we can’t stress enough that Envira is photographer’s best friend. It also comes with a Watermarking addon. You will need at least a silver license of Envira Gallery to use this addon.

Simply install and activate Envira Gallery plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Envira Gallery » Settings and click on the addons tab. Locate Watermarking addon, and then install and activate it.

Now when creating a gallery or editing an existing gallery, you will notice the new watermarking tab in gallery settings.

Watermarking addon in Envira Gallery plugin for WordPress

Method 2: Using Easy Watermark Plugin

The other option is to use the Easy Watermark plugin. Simply install and activate the Easy Watermark plugin. Upon activation, go to Settings » Easy Watermark page to configure the plugin settings.

Settings page for Easy Watermark plugin

For detailed instructions take a look at our guide on how to automatically add watermark to images in WordPress.

3. Disable Hotlinking of Images in WordPress

Another common way to steal images from websites is by loading them from the original source. The image will load from your servers and will be displayed on third party websites without your permission.

This also increases your server load and bandwidth usage.

Here is how you can disable hotlinking of images from your WordPress site.

Simply add this code to the .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root directory.

#disable hotlinking of images with forbidden or custom image option
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{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 replace wpbeginner.com with your own domain name.

This code blocks hotlinking while still allowing images to be viewed in search results and on your website.

Can’t find the .htaccess file? Refer to our tutorial on how to find the .htaccess file in WordPress.

4. Add Copyright Notices on Your WordPress Site

Adding a copyright notice to your website can also discourage people from stealing images. You can simply add a copyright notice to your theme’s footer file in plain text or HTML like this:

<p>&copy; 2009-2016 WPbeginenr.com</p>

The downside of this is that you will have to edit this code each year. A better approach is to add a dynamic copyright notice in WordPress. Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function wpb_copyright() {
global $wpdb;
$copyright_dates = $wpdb->get_results("
SELECT
YEAR(min(post_date_gmt)) AS firstdate,
YEAR(max(post_date_gmt)) AS lastdate
FROM
$wpdb->posts
WHERE
post_status = 'publish'
");
$output = '';
if($copyright_dates) {
$copyright = "&copy; " . $copyright_dates[0]->firstdate;
if($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 finds the date of the first post you published on your blog and the last date you published anything. After that it outputs a dynamic copyright notice.

You will need to add the shortcode [copyright] to any post, page or text widget on your site to display copyright notice. You can also use this code in your theme’s footer.

<?php echo wpb_copyright(); ?>

Copyright notice

We hope this article helped you protect your images and prevent image theft in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to fix most common image issues in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Trusted by over 1.3 million readers worldwide.

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35 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Aaron says:
    May 10, 2020 at 5:23 am

    Stopping the “right click” only stops people that don’t know what they are doing, anyone scraping images will be still able to pull images.
    to test this open your browser, press ‘F12’ then load any site, in the Network tab you will see all the images and content that your browser has downloaded to display the page, you can just save anything you like from there.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      May 12, 2020 at 8:36 am

      You are correct and we do state in the article that there is no way to completely stop people from stealing your images, but these are options for those trying to add some level of prevention.

      Reply
  2. crystal says:
    May 9, 2019 at 12:54 pm

    Hi, if someone were to put it in the browser, is there a way to keep the wp-content/uploads URL from displaying a listing of all your photos, mp3’s, ect?

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      May 10, 2019 at 10:48 am

      For what it sounds like you’re asking, you would want to take a look at our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/disable-directory-browsing-wordpress/

      Reply
  3. Mungurul Alam says:
    Jan 30, 2019 at 7:54 am

    This post has helped me to stop image stealing from my another website Thanks

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 30, 2019 at 11:06 am

      Glad our article could help :)

      Reply
  4. Usman says:
    Dec 21, 2018 at 7:51 am

    Somehow, even after following everything and editing the .htaccess file, the images can still be hotlinked :s don’t know why

    Reply
  5. Helios Wislan says:
    Dec 2, 2018 at 4:49 am

    I love WP Beginner a lot! can’t say how many times it helps me, thanky you team for your fantastic and funtastic job for us.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Dec 3, 2018 at 10:20 pm

      Hey Helios,

      Thanks for the kind words. We really appreciate it.

      Reply
  6. Vikas Gupta says:
    Sep 9, 2018 at 4:45 am

    Thanks for such a valuable information.

    Reply
  7. Aditya says:
    Aug 12, 2018 at 11:04 pm

    Thank you so much for your help

    Reply
  8. KarthikP says:
    May 2, 2018 at 12:33 am

    Thanks a lot .Even the code supplied on inmotion hosting was wrong.They redirected me to this page.Thanks a lot wpbeginner

    Reply
  9. yashwanth says:
    Nov 1, 2017 at 11:10 am

    Hi I would like to how to actibate the same in the mobile version of the site. I am able to disble rightclick on the pc site view but am able to download it on mobile

    Reply
  10. Matus says:
    Jul 15, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    Many big companies (like Apple or even you WPBeginner) don’t use image hotlink protection.
    Is this method bad for SEO?

    Also you allowed in your .htaccess code only google.com but Google have websites with many extensions, how can I include them all?

    Reply
  11. Sagar Patil says:
    Apr 2, 2017 at 11:46 am

    Hello.
    i wont my images crawl by search engine. but not hotlink by other website.
    if i disable hotlinking using htaccces. then does search engine will crawl my images or not?

    Reply
  12. Erez says:
    Jan 16, 2017 at 11:48 am

    Overall, good article.
    You can still go to restricted images by using the direct URL:

    example.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ImageName.jpg

    Any thoughts how it can be restricted?

    Reply
  13. Rena says:
    Jan 12, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    Great tips. Thanks for including the coding and how to’s.

    Reply
  14. Semih says:
    Nov 15, 2016 at 9:32 am

    Is it possible to protect SVG files from stealing?

    On browsers easy to see SVG
    ctrl+shift+c

    Reply
  15. Bobby says:
    Sep 11, 2016 at 6:19 am

    If I am not mistaken, someone can just just save any given page and there you go …. all images from that respective page will be downloaded into a folder from the browser function.

    Any thoughts?

    Reply
  16. Juliette says:
    Sep 7, 2016 at 1:03 pm

    Hi and thanks for a great article!

    I have a question about the rewrite rule:

    !^http(s)?://(www\.)?wpbeginner.com [NC]

    For the line above, can I point to one base path if I am currently working in MAMP/localhost and plan on switching to a live server later?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  17. Carol Henrichs says:
    Jul 21, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Still looking for a way to prevent access to the uploads area. When turning of lightbox in Envira, clicking on the image takes you directly to the image file and there is no protection.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 21, 2016 at 11:29 pm

      It seems like Envira support team replied to your ticket there. Let us know if you need more help.

      Reply
  18. Stef says:
    May 3, 2016 at 2:39 am

    Thanks for the article. I’ve installed the “no right click” which is fine when people are on laptops/desktops, but it doesn’t seem to stop people from holding down on a photo on their smartphone and “saving image”….

    Any thoughts? Or tips?

    Reply
  19. Catherine says:
    Feb 10, 2016 at 1:04 pm

    Thanks for the tips.
    Is there a way to select the copyright author? Some pic are from me, others from stock. I use to give the credit at the end of the post, but don’t like it because it’s a kind of stop from reading related articles, or commenting.
    I would love to have a tool who will sett the copyright into the pic. Not like a watermark, but as a text addition.
    Is there something like that available?

    PS: which plugin is that “Add your comment + notify me of… also subscribe without commenting”

    Reply
  20. Pete says:
    Jan 26, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    I am correct in assuming the same methods apply to video as well? I have a lot of video on my site and it is branded, but I would be more concerned about the ‘theft’ of my bandwidth slowing my site down.
    I’m happy to have my content shared actually, but I don’t want that to result in a slow site when video is so demanding to start with.
    Thanks!

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 26, 2016 at 5:35 pm

      Please take a look at, why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

      Reply
  21. Rennie Joy says:
    Jan 19, 2016 at 12:51 pm

    Great tips for someone just starting out. Thank you!

    Reply
  22. Olli says:
    Jan 17, 2016 at 12:23 pm

    You forgot something: dontate your pictures to the public by using a CC licence.
    It won’t hurt anyone and you don’t have to worry about something called “theft” (some my say “copying”).

    Reply
  23. Susan Smith says:
    Jan 14, 2016 at 8:43 am

    Would this prevent scrapers as well?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jan 14, 2016 at 2:17 pm

      It will discourage them but not prevent content scraping.

      Reply
  24. FraNK UMEADI says:
    Jan 13, 2016 at 7:58 am

    I have always being a victim of No 3 (Image hot linking). Recently a lot of tech bloggers started copying my posts at with the images being loaded from my server. This has caused slow loading and increased my used bandwith.

    Thanks so much for this guide! I will be implementing no 3 immediately.

    Reply
  25. iostar says:
    Jan 12, 2016 at 12:54 pm

    What if on the website i have activated Jetpack Photon? Can image stealing be forbidden?

    Reply
    • Pete says:
      Jan 26, 2016 at 3:43 pm

      I would love to know the answer to this question – anyone?

      Reply
      • bmoney says:
        Aug 29, 2016 at 7:53 am

        BUMP..

        I’ve had wp-content-copy-protection for a while now and it has just started causing havoc with my site..

        Reply
  26. Kate_H says:
    Jan 12, 2016 at 12:21 pm

    Great article.

    Being a keen amature photographer I am always concerned with showing my photos online but this article has given me a couple of ideas and I will definately check out http://enviragallery.com/

    Regards

    Reply

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