Different ways to block a website from employees

Instead of monitoring your employees’ internet activity, you could choose to block a website. While many employers will choose to block porn sites, you may want to block those that affect productivity.

While there are downsides depending on the jobs the employees need to do, there are many more benefits. Now all you need to do is learn how to block specific websites from your employees’ computers.

How to block a website

Download Software to block a website

One option is to download some specific software for blocking sites. There are many different companies offering software for this need, and some are even free. It’s worth doing your research into the software. While free does not necessarily mean bad, there could be limitations that affect your workplace efforts.

The software will be easy to install on the computer. Once it’s there, you usually simply add the websites you want to block, and that will pass around the whole system in the office. When people pull up the site, they will be alerted that there is a block on the page to prevent them from looking into it.

This is often more effective than other forms of website blocking because:

• It is harder to bypass
• Employees don’t need to know the software being used
• It’s easier to add in new sites as they are added to your software
• You can still monitor activity to find out when websites need to be added
• You could add time limits so the sites are available during specific times of the day

Block a website on each computer

It is possible block a website on each computer over the network without software. Most of the time this will be through browsers, but that could lead to problems with people bypassing the block by using a different browser. You would need to implement the browser option on every single browser downloaded on the PC.

If the computers run on Microsoft Windows, it is possible to block a website through the family settings. This is similar to blocking certain websites from a child’s computer to keep them safe. The problem here is that you will need to create a login for the Microsoft site, and there is a bypass if the employees really want in.

The websites can be removed at any time should one be needed for work. There is also the ability to add new ones quickly by logging into accounts.

Using coding to block a website

There is the option to use coding to block websites. This is usually done in a Notepad, and will need to block each website in turn. The problem is you need to understand the coding to make sure it is done effectively.

However, employees who understand the code could find a way around this block quite easily if they really want to break the rules.

There are various ways to block a website from employees. The question now is whether you really want to opt for this route or not.