ReachCustomersOnline.com

One caveat about the Dynamic Drive code is that you have to paste it into every page. Linking to a .js file works only with Microsoft Explorer web browsers. To work in Firefox web browsers, you have to include the code anywhere on each of the web pages whose images you want to protect.

The second immediate step to take is to create then drop a blank web page into every folder of your website that contains images. The easiest way is to create a text file, name it index.html, then copy it to every folder you want to protect.

What does this blank web page do? It prevents people from viewing your web page source code, finding the folder where you store the images that appear on your page, then browsing directly to that folder. When they browse directly to any image folder, your blank index.html folder will display only a blank page. Without this blank file, visitors would see a list of images in that folder and the ability to click through to any sub folders.

Beyond these two immediate steps, you also should use a "robots" file to keep search engines from browsing your website folders that contain images.

The robots files is a simple text file named robots.txt and it should contain these lines at a minimum:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /ImageFolderToProtect1/
Disallow: /ImageFolderToProtect2/
Disallow: /ImageFolderToProtect3/

As with the blank index.html file, simply open a basic text editor like Notepad, create a new file, save it as robots.txt, type in these lines (replacing ImageFolderToProtect with your folder names, of course). Then upload your robots.txt file to the root folder where your website home page resides. (Want to learn more about robot files? Check out the Robots.txt File Tutorial.)

Another simple step you can take to protect your website images is to use meta tags in your web pages. These tags instruct search engines to not catalogue your images. The tags to use are:

<.meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noimageindex, noimageclick" ./>

[Note: Remove the periods (.) in the above line of meta tag code. I had to add them to get the code to display in this article.]

One thing to note about the robots.txt file and use of meta tags is that they work only with legitimate search engines like Google. Rogue search engines might ignore the directives in your robots file. However, following these steps will protect your website images better than not taking any steps.

The last simple step to take to protect your images is perhaps the simplest: add a copyright notice to all your pages and include a web page that states the terms of use for all your content and images.

Beyond these simple steps, you also can look into watermarks for your images. Software like Photoshop can add invisible watermarks to your images to help identify them should you ever want to pursue legal action. In Photoshop, you can embed watermarks by using the Filter > Digimarc > Embed Watermark. You also can visit the DigiMarc website to learn more about watermarks. However, you would have to find a violation of use of your watermarked image then have the money to prosecute legal action.

Protecting your website images is not guaranteed. You can't hide the code that displays your web pages. You can't prevent rogue search engines from cataloging your images. And you can't prevent people from selecting File > Save As > Complete Web Page from their web browser. However, the steps I've outlined can lock down your images enough to make visitors work to take your images. Most importantly, these steps help make your case in the event you do pursue legal action.