How to secure web pages in PHP

khovorka

Hello,

I need to know how you secure pages so that nothing can be download off a page such as an image or a document. This would only be allowed if they logged in to the site and had the correct permissions/privileges. The page would not be readonly necessarily as there might be entry fields for entering information on the page.

How can this be done. Are there HTML tags that would do this or how is it done?

Thanks,

Kim H.

Weedpacket

It's basically impossible. Once it's on their computer (and it has to be on their computer to be displayed), they can pretty much do what they like with it. If nothing else they could just hit "Print Screen" and they'd have a screen shot.

I've seen fancy tricks with images-as-CSS-backgrounds, and transparent overlays designed to prevent people right-clicking and choosing "Save As" or simply click-dragging it off into a folder - defeated by bringing up the "View Page Info" dialogue and seeing what's listed under "media".

If you don't want them to have it, don't give it to them.

bradgrafelman

And with Firefox extensions especially, downloading content that you display is only a few clicks away in many cases.

If you're really determined to prevent the average user from downloading your content, then I would suggest making a demo or preview-only version of the content. For example, with images, reduce the size and add a "PREVIEW ONLY" watermark or something like that (this could be done on-the-fly). For documents, perhaps you could make only the first x number of characters/pages/etc. available for preview.

djjjozsi

print the texts with flash/php-image, when you display images show them in flash/use small slices,

once you make difficulties one person who really needs your content, your site will be hacked.

if you hide your contents from the users, the search engines won't see too.

Weedpacket

djjjozsi wrote:
print the texts with flash/php-image, when you display images show them in flash/use small slices,

...and I hit "Print Screen".

djjjozsi wrote:
if you hide your contents from the users, the search engines won't see too.

I'm willing to bet that search engines won't be logged in or have the necessary permissions.