Title: Protect CSS Files
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Protect CSS Files

 *  [alvanweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alvanweb/)
 * (@alvanweb)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/)
 * Is there any way to prevent surfers to download and view my .css (Style Sheets)
   files on my server?
    How i protect my design from theft?

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  [Mark (podz)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/podz/)
 * (@podz)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236364)
 * I used to play around with scripts that would encode ( [http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/HTML-Page-Guardian/3000-2181-10388981.html](http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/HTML-Page-Guardian/3000-2181-10388981.html))
   but the hassle involved was just daft so I gave up 🙂
 * A copyright notice is good enough – after all, even with the above they could
   recreate it using their own css.
 *  [jalenack](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jalenack/)
 * (@jalenack)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236366)
 * Podz, are you kidding me? those things are the biggest bunch of garbage ever.
 * Anyways, there’s no real way to protect anything on the web. Period. However,
   you can make it *difficult* and not worth the time.
 * Here’s what I’d do:
 * [http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/](http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/)
 * And run your css through that on super-compact mode. That’ll make your css pretty
   unreadable…
 *  [Mark (podz)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/podz/)
 * (@podz)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236367)
 * jalenack – this was _years_ ago 🙂
 *  [Mark (podz)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/podz/)
 * (@podz)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236368)
 * The compressor there is very similar to the tool at flumpcakes.
    So even though
   you compress your css to be tricky to read, if someone runs it through flumpcakes,
   it makes it all ‘pretty print’ again.
 * Guess the answer is no…
 *  Thread Starter [alvanweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alvanweb/)
 * (@alvanweb)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236388)
 * Do you mean what you say?
    these words mean no exist way or you don’t know the
   answer? we can’t encrypt or encode .css files contents with php encrypt function
   or other programming languages?
 *  [Mark (podz)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/podz/)
 * (@podz)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236392)
 * Let’s say there was .. then everyone would do it, and you and I would have been
   unable to learn CSS by looking at how others achieved certain designs.
 * For a browser to display the page, it has to read the css file. It then has to
   turn that – if you have encoded it – into something it can understand, OR the
   server first has to decode the file and send that to the browser.
    But once it’s
   in the browser, the user can manipulate that. It’s the way the web works. You
   could make it trickier for the average person to find / download but if someone
   wants to take it, they will.
 * Put a copyright notice in it.
    Having said that, there have been discussions…
   [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/35557](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/35557)
   [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/38024](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/38024)
 *  Thread Starter [alvanweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alvanweb/)
 * (@alvanweb)
 * [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236445)
 * -Thanks podz
    this is quite. your statements is completely verity. I think the
   best way for these problems is just convince ourself by Copyright rules.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘Protect CSS Files’ is closed to new replies.

 * 7 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [alvanweb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alvanweb/)
 * Last activity: [20 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/protect-css-files/#post-236445)
 * Status: not resolved

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