Okay, so you’ve created the best website for selling courses on your topic using WordPress and LearnDash. That’s great, but have you taken steps to protect your course content?
Others looking to make a quick buck could try to steal the course content you’ve worked hard to create. And if they have stolen it, they can either use it to learn for free, or resell it with some modifications to make some money themselves.
To avoid this situation, it’s a good idea to take some measures to prevent your course content from being stolen.
1. Limit the number of simultaneous logins
Allowing multiple sessions at the same time may is a relatively normal process, but it does make it easier for hackers to log into your users’ accounts undetected.
Someone could use your students’ login credentials to steal course content, even if they are logged in to study themselves. To avoid this, you should restrict multiple users from logging in at the same time.
Fortunately, this is not difficult to do with the help of plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory. Logged in, Memberium and WPActivityLog are 3 such plugins that you can use to limit simultaneous logins.
2. Disable cut-copy-paste
One of the most common ways that course content (or other content published on the internet) is stolen is the traditional cut/copy and paste. By disabling these 3 features on your website, you can largely protect your course content from theft.
There are two ways to do this: you can either disable the right-click that displays the cut, copy and paste options altogether; or, you can deactivate only these 3 functions.
There are a number of plugins on the WordPress marketplace that will help you do both (e.g. WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click or Watermark WordPress Files). Make sure to check the plugin’s documentation to make it work.
3. Control downloads from your website
If your course content contains files that can be downloaded, you should protect them with a download manager plugin. Again, there are many plugins that allow you to do this. The most popular is WordPress Download Manager.
With this plugin, you have full control over downloadable content on your website. Not only can you protect your downloads with a password, login status, captcha, IP address and other protection methods, but you can also view reports with statistical information about the downloaded content.
The best part is that it doesn’t just protect files hosted on your server – you can also host your files on other platforms such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Box and Dropbox.
4. Host videos on a video hosting service
If your course content contains videos, you can protect them by hosting them on a video hosting service. Wistia, Amazon S3 and Vimeo are some of the most popular video hosting services you can use for this purpose.
These video hosting services not only offer a robust and scalable platform to host and stream your video content, but also complete security. Their domain restrictions ensure that your videos uploaded to the website can only be played via an embedded player on your domain.
They also offer various other protection mechanisms (e.g. password, private link, etc.) that make it easier for you to share your content with learners in a secure way.
5. Disable direct URL access to your videos
Often, video content can be stolen by firing off the URL where it is hosted directly in the web browser. Once they are loaded, they can be downloaded whether they have paid for them or not.
To prevent this, you should disable direct URL access to your videos. Prevent Direct Access (PDA) is a powerful plugin that redirects logged out people trying to download something from your website to the 404 error page.
You can also change the 404 page to something else. For example, you can redirect them to your login page instead.
6. Add a watermark to your videos and PDFs
When people want to steal content, it’s often to gain financial benefit by reselling your content as their own. Watermarking your course content is one of the best ways to do this. You can watermark a corner of your videos or PDF files to prevent someone from reselling your content.
Even if the files are stolen, the watermarks embedded in the content will help identify the original creator. Again, the best plugin for this is Watermark WordPress files.
7. Set up multiple instructors to restrict access to all courses
Being the only instructor or course creator on your e-learning site is not only unproductive, but also a security vulnerability.
You may want to create all the course content yourself. But keep in mind that if your user account is hacked, all published courses can be stolen. However, if these courses were published by multiple instructors, not all courses are at risk, even if individual accounts are hacked, including yours.
If you’re wondering how to set up multiple instructors on your site, the Instructor Role add-on for LearnDash is the answer. It creates a new user role in your WordPress dashboard called “Instructor”.
Instructor roles are not allowed to change website settings or course content created by others. Conversely, no one can play with the content created by these roles either.
8. Protect your course pages and videos with a password
By default, LearnDash only provides you with the function to make your course content accessible to participants. A student who has paid once and enrolled in a course can access your premium content.
However, if you wish, you can also add a second layer of protection for your course content. The Password Protect WordPress Pro (PPWP Pro) plugin allows you to password protect your course pages and videos.
Once installed, you can set individual passwords for all your course pages, which you share secretly (e.g. via email, SMS, etc.) with your learners. Once they have successfully logged in, they must enter the correct password to access your content.
This way, no one can steal your course content, even if their login credentials have been compromised.
And don’t worry – your students don’t need to keep re-entering the password. You have the option to set a cookie expiration time for each session that is started after successful password entry.
For example, you can set the password expiry time to 7 days and save users from having to re-enter the password for 7 days if they have entered it correctly.
9. Harness the power of Google Alerts and DMCA notifications
Google can also help you ensure the security of your course content. You can set up a Google Alert on the title for each of your courses, which will notify you via email if someone copies your course.
You can also set up some other alerts on important parts or sections of your course that will help you if someone has copied your content but published it under a different title.
If you notice that someone is doing this, you can ask them to remove the content immediately. If this doesn’t happen within a reasonable time, send a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice. And if they still don’t remove it, you can take legal action.
10. Update content regularly
By updating content, you not only keep the content relevant, but you also make it more difficult for pirates to steal your content and maintain the quality of stolen content.
Keeping them up to your standards and as up-to-date as your content means they need to keep stealing from you, which increases the risk of them getting caught.
Otherwise, they will end up publishing content that they stole from you a long time ago, which will then be outdated. As a result, the majority of users who pay for your content will want to get it from you, and not from these pirates.
11. Create a community
A determined hacker will find a loophole or two to exploit and use your content. In many cases, you will not be able to guarantee 100% security of your intellectual property around the clock.
However, there is one thing that cloners cannot replicate, and that is a community. Building a community around your website and your courses will also help keep your course content secure.
If you manage to build a vibrant community of students on your website through forums, messaging and other social channels, people will automatically gravitate towards your courses and content and not something else.
A community builds trust, it builds a relationship with your learners and colleagues. Plus, members of your community can let you know if they notice someone copying or plagiarizing your course content. Keeping track of who is copying your content is a Herculean task, and a community of loyal members can be a great help.
Conclusion
While these 11 strategies provide robust protection for your valuable course content, it’s worth remembering that no security system is completely impenetrable. If someone is truly determined, they may still find ways to access your material.
This reality shouldn’t discourage you. Even established businesses with significant resources face intellectual property challenges. The key is finding the right balance between protection and accessibility—securing your content without creating a frustrating experience for legitimate students.
