This article applies to organisations with a 'Hybrid' setup (both On-Premise Appliance and Cloud), as well as On-Premise only and Cloud only setups.
Smoothwall has built-in Blocklist Categories to prevent access to undesirable websites and domains. You can also set up your own custom lists to allow or block specific websites as required (shown below).
Tips
- Before creating a new policy, check whether the URL is already included in an existing category used in one of your policies.
- If you have a Hybrid setup (both Cloud and On-Premise Appliance), you can manage your Custom Categories and Web Filter Policies in either place.
- The process below cannot block parts of a website or domain. To do that, use Content Modification.
Wildcards
You can’t use wildcards, and must include the Top Level Domain (TLD). For example, you can block .org.uk and .co.uk using ‘uk’.
You can also block subdomains while allowing the parent domain. For example, adding examplesite.co.uk wouldn't block files.examplesite.co.uk
Each term must include the complete domain between full stops. For example, adding site.co.uk won’t block examplesite.co.uk
On-Premise Appliance
- Go to Guardian > Policy Objects > Categories, and select an existing category or create a Custom Category.
- Enter your domains or URLs into the Domain/URL filtering field and select Save.
- Create a Web Filter Policy using your custom category to Allow or Block these URLs or domains.
- Log out to sync any changes to Cloud.
Cloud Filter
- Go to Filter > Custom Categories, and Edit an existing category or select Add category.
- Select the Domain/URL list tab, enter domains or URLs, optionally enter a descriptive comment, then select +Add URL.
- Create a Web Filter Policy using your custom category to Allow or Block these URLs or domains.
- Go to Filter > Publishing and select Publish to sync changes to On-Premise Appliance.