Title: Name Redactor
Author: joav
Published: <strong>April 5, 2013</strong>
Last modified: April 8, 2013

---

Search plugins

This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/name-redactor.svg)

# Name Redactor

 By [joav](https://profiles.wordpress.org/joav/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/name-redactor.1.0.1.zip)

 * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/name-redactor/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/name-redactor/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/name-redactor/#installation)
 * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/name-redactor/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/name-redactor/)

## Description

Note: This plugin requires at least version 3.3 of WordPress.

The Name Redactor is a WordPress plugin which allows WordPress users to
 hide personal
data from search engines. As the name of the plugin implies, the type of content
we are talking about in this context are personal names. The plugin works by checking
whether the visitor to the site is human or a search engine robot. If the visitor
is a search engine robot, the plugin will redact any personal names before delivering
the content, replacing them with the text _[redacted]_. To human visitors, the names
will appear as normal.

### Purpose of the Name Redactor

The web is full of personal names, which is usually attached to some
 contextual
data (e.g. utterances, images, etc.). If these personal names are indexed by search
engines, along with the contextual data attached to them, both will be discoverable
by anyone searching for a specific name. While some such discoveries may be beneficial
to the subject, others may be harmful. The purpose of the Name Redactor is not to
block search engines from accessing your WordPress site or indexing your content.
The purpose is to avoid having personal names being indexed along with contextual
data attached to those names.

#### Features:

 * Manually tag names to be redacted in pages, posts and comments by using
    the ‘
   Redact’ button in the Text Editor.
 * Automatically redact names in pages, posts and comments, using a simple
    set 
   of rules.
 * Create an opt in list of names that should always be redacted,
    regardless of
   any automatic name detection.
 * Create an opt out list of names that should _not_ be redacted
    automatically.

### Detailed description

The Name Redactor plugin works by detecting if a visitor to the site is a
 search
engine robot, and if so, the plugin will redact any personal names (which have been
tagged with `<redact content="name"></redact>`) before delivering the content, replacing
them with the text `[redacted]`. The tagging can either be done manually by the 
publisher, or automatically by the program.

#### Manually tag names

When you install the plugin for the first time, it is set by default to
 only redact
names that have been manually tagged. If you go to add a new post, page, or comment(
or edit already existing content) and select the Text Editor, you will see that 
a new button has been added to the pre-existing ones. This button, labeled **redact**,
allows you to tag a name in the text. Simply select the name you want to tag, and
press the redact button. Alternatively, place the cursor before a name, press the
redact button to add the name redact tag, place the cursor after the name, and press
the redact button again to close the tag. Note that these tags will only be visible
in the page source of the website. Before publishing something, you can view the
text from a bot’s point of view by pressing the ‘Preview’ button (note that you 
first need to select this option from the plugin settings menu).

Also note that when uninstalling the plugin, any manually tagged names
 will remain
tagged. If you want to remove the tags, you will have to remove them manually as
well, by going back and editing the content.

#### Automatic name detection

You can also set the plugin to automatically try to detect personal names,
 and 
redact them accordingly. This automatic name detection is accomplished by using 
a simple set of rules, written as regular expressions: 1. It will match a single
word with the first letter capitalized, as long as that word is not at the beginning
of the sentence. 2. It will match two or more consecutive words starting with the
first letter capitalized, as long as the first word is not at the beginning of the
sentence.

Names that have been tagged manually will continue to be tagged until the
 tags 
are manually removed (so if you at a later date should wish to remove tags from 
a name, you will have to go back and edit the post, comment or page in question).
Automatic tagging is done on the spot whenever the content is requested by a search
engine bot. This means that the content in the database is left unchanged, and no
tags are saved along with the text.

Detecting whether or not a visitor to the site is a web crawler, is done
 by checking
the “User-Agent” header of the client software originating the request (see the 
[Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent) for more information on
this). Whenever a visitor requests to view the content, be it a page, comment, or
post, the plugin will check the user-agent string up against a list containing a
set of known search engine bot names. If the User-Agent matches a name in the list,
the plugin will redact any tagged content before returning it to the bot. Upon installation,
the plugin will add a default set of bot names to the list. The user can then freely
add or delete names to or from the list.

Note that while the plugin is primarily meant as a way of preventing
 search engines
from indexing personal names, it can, in theory, also be used to prevent disclosure
of other types of personal data, by manually tagging it in the same manner as you
would do names.

#### Plugin settings

You can change the settings for the plugin in the ‘Name Redactor Settings’
 sub 
menu, located in the ‘Tools’ menu in the admin panel. The Name Redactor settings
menu is organized into three different options pages, with tabs to make navigation
easier. The option pages are organized as follows: Options, Opt-in/opt-out, and 
Bots.

 * The Options page allows you to change all the different settings of the
    plugin,
   like which redact-mode to use. Each setting is accompanied by an explanation 
   of what it does.
 * The Opt-in/opt-out page allows you to create a list of names that should
    always
   be redacted, regardless of any automatic name detection, or names that should
   _not_ be redacted automatically. Each name in the list is accompanied by an opt-
   in or opt-out status. Names that are opt-in will be tagged automatically, while
   names that are opt-out will not. You can add or remove names to/from the list,
   as well as change the opt-in/opt-out status of each name in the list at any time.
 * The Bots page displays a list of search engine bot names. Whenever
    someone visits
   the site, the plugin will check the visitor (or rather, its user agent) up against
   this list, and if the visitor matches a name in the list (which means the visitor
   is a search engine bot), personal names that have been tagged will be redacted
   before the content is returned to the bot. For example, the search engine bot
   from Google is named Googlebot. So by adding the name Googlebot to the list, 
   you avoid personal names (that have been tagged for redaction) being indexed 
   by Google. The plugin comes with a default set of bot names, and you can add 
   or remove names at any time.

Credit

The original idea for this plugin comes from Gisle Hannemyr
 [http://hannemyr.com/index.php](http://hannemyr.com/index.php).

### Uninstallation

 1. If you want the plugin to remove all tables and options associated with
     the plugin
    upon deactivation, you can choose this in the Name Redactor Settings sub menu, 
    located in the ‘Tools’ menu in the admin panel.
 2. Deactivate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
 3. If you want to completely remove the plugin, click ‘Delete’ next to the
     plugin
    name in the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress, or delete the folder named ‘name-redactor’
    in the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory. Clicking ‘Delete’ in the ‘Plugins’ menu
    ensures that all tables and options associated with the plugin are removed as well.
 4. Note that when uninstalling the plugin, any manually tagged names
     will remain 
    tagged. If you want to remove the tags, you will have to remove them manually as
    well, by going back and editing the content.

## Screenshots

 * [[
 * screenshot-1.png – The Options tab, which controls various plugin settings.
 * [[
 * screenshot-2.png – The Options tab (cont.), which controls various plugin settings.
 * [[
 * screenshot-3.png – The Opt-in/opt-out tab, where the admin can maintain lists
   of opt in/opt out names.
 * [[
 * screenshot-4.png – The Bots tab, where the admin can maintain a list of bot names
   for the plugin to check against.
 * [[
 * screenshot-5.png – If the ‘add a redact button’ option is selected in the Options
   tab, a redact button will show up in HTML editor for manual tagging.
 * [[
 * screenshot-6.png – The redact button has been clicked, generating a redact tag
   in the text window.
 * [[
 * screenshot-7.png – Two personal names have been manually tagged in the text.
 * [[
 * screenshot-8.png – This is what a normal visitor will see when viewing the text.
   Both personal names will appear as normal.
 * [[
 * screenshot-9.png – This is what the search engine robot will see when viewing
   the text. Both personal names have been replaced with the text [redacted].

## Installation

 1. Go to ‘Plugins’ -> ‘Add New’ in the WordPress admin panel.
 2. Under ‘Search’, type in ‘Name Redactor’.
 3. Click ‘Install Now’ to install the plugin.
 4. When the plugin has been installed, click ‘Activate Plugin’ to activate
     the plugin.
 5. You can change the settings for the plugin in the ‘Name Redactor
     Settings’ sub
    menu, located in the ‘Tools’ menu in the admin panel.

Or

 1. Download and unzip the folder ‘name-redactor.zip’ to the
     ‘/wp-content/plugins/’
    directory.
 2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
 3. You can change the settings for the plugin in the ‘Name Redactor
     Settings’ sub
    menu, located in the ‘Tools’ menu in the admin panel.

## FAQ

None.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“Name Redactor” is open source software. The following people have contributed to
this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ joav ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/joav/)

[Translate “Name Redactor” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/name-redactor)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/name-redactor/), check
out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/name-redactor/), or subscribe
to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/name-redactor/) 
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/name-redactor/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.0.1

 * Fixed a bug in the uninstall.php file, resulting in an error message when deleting
   the plugin.
 * Made some minor code changes in name-redactor.php.
 * Made some minor changes to the readme.txt.
 * Moved the screenshots from the downloadable folder into the /assets directory,
   reducing the file size of the name-redactor.zip.

## Meta

 *  Version **1.0.1**
 *  Last updated **13 years ago**
 *  Active installations **Fewer than 10**
 *  WordPress version ** 3.3 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **3.5.2**
 * Tags
 * [hide](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/hide/)[names](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/names/)
   [privacy](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/privacy/)[redact](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/redact/)
   [redaction](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/redaction/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/name-redactor/advanced/)

## Ratings

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[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/name-redactor/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ joav ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/joav/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/name-redactor/)