Geeklog Forums

Is there a way to protect my site so nobody can copy my theme. It's so easy to grab somebody's theme. Looking at the source you can see the theme path and name. From there it's easy to grab files like "header.thtml" or "footer.thtml" and "style.css". In fact you can grab everything once you know the files that make up a theme. I can't find a way to stop this without making my site unavailable. Thanks Alain

Well, this is the web - everything that your browser displays can be stolen ... You could, however, password-protect parts of your layout directory: The .thtml files are read by Geeklog, not by the browser, so you could protect directories that contain them. Images, however, must be accessible since they will be loaded by the browser. All this will only make it harder for someone to copy your theme, not prevent it. That's what copyright laws are for ... bye, Dirk

If you would list your website address, I'm sure I can help you.

Sure ! I will ! I have the most beautifull GL site in the world. Here is my url: http://www.themstealerprotected.com/

That URL did not resolve! hehehehe

Isn't this open source anyways?

Why would you want to? The whole point of this open source - free software thing is that people can take someone elses' code, give em some credit, and make as many changes to it as they want. Why not share your work with the world, just like all the great guys(and girls, too) who have made themes and let everyone download and modify them.

Open source only applies to software! Individual themes and graphics are not for the taking unless the creator makes them available to you.

My eyes were burning. Did somebody mention my name? :-)---L. Whitworth www.finiserv.com

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L. Whitworth

everybody can steal them if they want even if they cant see your files and your CSS It's not difficult to copy an style at all, in order to get the graphics you can "print screen". I get all your design by doing that, then i cut the parts I need and I put them in the right place. I match your CSS with Mine and that's it. In no more than 3-4 hours I can copy your site style without even having access to your files. You should try to block "print screen" key, but I don't think you are able to do that. bye

the best way to protect your work is to make it available for download at your site. how did you got GeekLog anyway?

There's no need to use printscreen. When you view any page, an entire copy is automatically saved to your computer if you know where to look in the temp files. If you don't, you can use your browser's file -> save feature to download all the graphics, javascript, and html. It is interesting those who readily take and use open source software and then worry about how others may steal their precious themes. I don't think anyone should steal another's work but how about giving back something as a show of thanks.

Yes, you can protect your themes quite easily(except for the images)

By restricting access to the "thtml" files you'll protect most of the goods particularly the php variables and snippets of code. Somebody might be able to reconstruct your thtml page manually(which is extremely tedious)but if they're good enough to do that then they're good enough to make their own theme and wouldn't want to bother.

To do this, put this in your .htaccess file


Despite what you might think, this does not break the site because apache does not have to serve the file. It's the php script that needs to access the file to be read in and then parsed. Access for a php script to read a file is determined by file permissions not .htaccess

And if you want to be a little trickier, create a .htaccess file in your layout directory like this:

Error 403 is the "access denied" error. By changing it to whatever your 404 error page is you make them think the thtml pages somehow don't exist. Somebody may also know a way to get apache to report http status code of 404 as well.