It is quite incredible to live in an age with a high-speed internet connection. You can do almost anything because, with just a few clicks, all the information you need can be easily yours. However, having a fast internet connection can hold you back as well. Browsing websites can eat up your attention, focus, and time – causing distractions and decreasing your productivity.
So, what you should do to remove these distractions? Simple. Block the websites that you usually visit when you’re bored or the websites that you don’t want your children to visit whenever they use your computer. Check our step by step guide on how to block unwanted websites on your computer below.
Block a Website for Yourself
If you want to block websites to avoid distractions while working on your computer, you can use the software Block Site to block them quickly. This is a perfect site block for Google Chrome. All you have to do is install its extension and start blocking websites.
When you set up the redirection feature of Block Site, it will automatically bring you to websites that you should really be using, especially if you’re trying to visit a blocked site. If you want to visit your favorite social media sites, you can also enable this and create a schedule so you can still visit them in your spare time.
However, this is not guaranteed. You can easily change the permission settings of Block Site to unblock websites. Other than that, anyone who uses your computer will still be able to access other web browsers to open the blocked sites on Chrome, even if you set up password protection. In other words, the purpose of Block Site is just to add some friction before you can access a website and also to keep yourself on track. This can’t be used to control any website access for your employees, kids, or yourself.
You can use extension permissions of Google Chrome instead to restrict access if you don’t want an outside extension like Block Site to run on each website you browse. For instance, you can restrict Block Site to run facebook.com if you just want Facebook to be blocked.
Other tech-savvy people may be used to blocking sites with the use of system host files, which allows them to define custom lists of domains and their associated IP addresses. But, this won’t work because Google Chrome tends to ignore system host files.
This is done by Chrome so that malware can be prevented from redirecting websites, such as Facebook, to malware-infected and malicious locations. It also prevents users to block Facebook and other similar websites as well. This just means that using extensions to block websites is better than using system host files.
Block a Website With Parental Controls
For personal use, the Block Site extension works perfectly fine. But, as mentioned earlier, you will not be able to use it effectively if you want to restrict your kids from accessing certain websites.
Unlike Block Site and other similar Chrome extensions, the built-in, site-blocking features of your WiFi routers can block the websites that you want. You can tell the router to block certain websites if it has such features, keeping anyone who connects on your WiFi network from accessing them. However, anyone can still use proxies or VPN to access those sites.
There’s also a parental control software installed on your computer, so you might want to check it out. Your operating system has some useful tools in addition to parental control software. For instance, the Windows 10 feature, which is called Family features, allows you to block certain websites for a child account.
Block a Website in your Organization
If your organization or company uses Chrome Enterprise. You can use the URLBlacklist feature of Chrome to block websites one by one. This feature won’t help you manage Chrome Enterprise at home as it’s intended to be accessed and managed by IT professionals of the organization or company only.
