How to Block a Website with Adblock Plus Blacklist
By David Secor
Adblock Plus is a free add-on for the Firefox, Chrome and Opera Web browsers. It is designed to block website ads that you may find annoying, distracting, or detrimental to your privacy and security. Adblock Plus features the ability to use blacklists and whitelists, which can be customized with filters to block all ad content from an entire website or to choose which ad content will be displayed. Content can be filtered by type, by filename or by its specific location on the server.
Step 1
Install Adblock Plus from its official website (link in Resources). Click the "Install" link on the main page, which is automatically customized for your browser. Then, if you are using Firefox, click “Allow” and “Install Now.” In Chrome, Click the “Add to Chrome” button and in Opera click the “Add to Opera” button, followed by “Install.” To be sure the installation is complete, restart the browser. An Adblock Plus icon will display in the status bar of Firefox or the toolbar of Chrome or Opera.
Step 2
Open the “Filter Preferences” dialog in Adblock Plus.
In Chrome, click the Adblock Plus icon, select “Options” and click on the “Add Your Own Filters” tab.
For Opera, right-click the Adblock Plus icon, select “Preferences” and click the “Add Your Own Filters” tab.
In Firefox, click the Adblock Plus icon and select “Filter Preferences.” Click the “Custom Filters” tab and then the “Add Filter Group” button. Type in a name for the filter group, if desired, and press the “Enter” key. Click the “Actions” button, select “Show/Hide Filters” and click “Add Filter.”
Step 3
Type in a new filter rule. In the first example below, all non-text content from the site Example.com is blocked by using the “*” wild card. If you notice that all the ads come from a certain directory on the server, you can block just the content from that directory with the second command. To block ads of a certain type, such as Flash animations with the SWF extension, use a wild card followed by the file extension, as in the third example which allows all but SWF files to load. In the fourth example, all GIF images are blocked that have a filename beginning with “banner.”
http://example.com/ http://example.com/ad-directory/ http://example.com/.swf http://example.com/banner.gif
With Adblock Plus, you can also add exceptions to the rules, defined by preceding them with "@@". If the entire site Example.com is blocked by a filter but you would like access the content in the “Cars” directory, type in the first example below. If all GIF images from a site are blocked, type the second example to view only GIF files that begin with “figure.”
@@|http://example.com/cars/ @@|http://example.com/figure.gif
Step 4
Add one filter or exception per line, followed by the “Enter” key, and close the window when finished. If you decide to remove the filter later, navigate back to the same window. In Firefox, click on the filter to be removed, then the “Filter Actions” button and choose “Delete.” In Chrome or Opera, click on the filter and then the button labeled “Remove Selected.”
References
Tips
- On the Adblock Plus website, you can find pre-assembled blacklists that will block most unwanted content automatically, which you can then customize with your own filters.
Warnings
- Text from the blocked website and embedded content from external, third-party websites may still be visible. Third-party content can be blocked by adding a filter for the source of the content.
Writer Bio
David L. Secor is a computer repairman and writer from west Texas. He has been writing informational articles on a wide variety of subjects since approximately 2005. When not writing, he scours the desert for interesting photos, often ending up with nothing but embedded thorns for his efforts.