Create a Custom Category

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.

 

Categories are used to group URLs, domains, search phrases, file types or video IDs to base filtering policies on. You can use our Standard categories, or create your own Custom categories. For example, you may need to create a custom category to:

  • Allow web-enabled network appliances, like VoIP phones or wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment.
  • Provide an exception to filtering policies. For example, you may block the 'News' category, but add Mylocalpaper.com to a custom category to allow access to that site.

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. To sync, log out of the On-Premise Appliance, or in Cloud go to Filter > Publishing and select Publish.

On-Premise Appliance

Before you begin

Before creating a new policy, check if the URL is already included in an existing category used in one of your policies.

Add a custom category

  1. Go to Guardian > Policy Objects > Categories.
  2. In the Manage categories section.
    • Enter the Name of your custom category.
    • Enter an optional descriptive Comment.
    • If you are part of a multi-tenant setup, select the tenants to use this category.
  3. Enter domains or URLs to block or allow into the Domain/URL filtering section.

  4. Select Advanced to configure additional filtering options as described in the Advanced settings section below.

    Tip

    If you have items in a list, select Edit in full-text mode and paste the list. To ensure they appear in the list correctly, select Edit in list mode.

  5. Select Save.

You can now use this custom category in any Filter, HTTPS Inspection or Content Modification Policy.

Advanced settings

Search Term Filtering

Allows or blocks usage of specific phrases or words users can search for with Search term filtering.

URL Patterns

Allows or blocks regular expressions to match domains/subdomains or URL strings. Use a PERL compatible regular expression, per line. For example, adultsite|gambling looks for URLs containing either the word adultsite or the word gambling.

Avoid using brackets ( ), dots ., or asterisks *, as these use a lot of memory.

Tip

Wildcards (.*) are not required at the start or end, as we presume all prefixes and suffixes. For example, you don’t need to add ‘www’, and adding smoothwall\.cloud includes portal.smoothwall.cloud and smoothwall.cloud/filter.

 

File Types

Allows or blocks specific file extensions. Enter the File types or file name extensions, one per line. You must include the dot, such as .doc.

Video ID filtering

Allows or blocks videos based on their ID. For example, in the URL youtube.com/watch?v=IDDkcQFrhLk, the video ID is 'IDDkcQFrhLk'.

See our guides for YouTube and Vimeo for examples of using video ID filtering.

Cloud Filter

  1. Go to Filter > Custom categories.
  2. Select Add category.
  3. Enter the Name of your custom category and an optional Description.
  4. Select All tenants, or select a tenant.
  5. Enter items into the Domain/URL list, Search Terms, or Videos tabs. See the sections below for further details.
  6. Select Add category.
  7. Go to Publishing from the left-hand menu and select Publish.

Domain/URL list

Enter domains or URLs to block or allow through URL or domain filtering.

Search Terms

Allows or blocks usage of specific phrases or words users can search for with Search term filtering.

Videos

Important

Devices must be on Cloud Filter Extension Version 3.1.0 or higher for video filtering.

 

You can block or allow specific videos, or prevent them from showing when embedded in other websites. See our guides for YouTube and Vimeo for examples of using video ID filtering.

  1. In the box, enter one of the items below:

    Note

    This functionality may not work for videos hosted on other platforms.

    • A full video URL.
    • A unique video ID, found near or at the end of the video’s URL:
      • An eleven character YouTube video ID. For example, in the URL https://youtu.be/IDDkcQFrhLk?feature=shared&t=60, the video ID is 'IDDkcQFrhLk'.
      • A nine character Vimeo video ID.
      • A seven character DailyMotion video ID.
  2. Select +Add Video Id.
  3. Repeat to add other videos.

For YouTube videos, you can see the video thumbnail and title. For Vimeo and DailyMotion videos, the ID is added to the list, but you can’t see the thumbnail or title.

Image 1: An example YouTube and Vimeo video added to a Custom Category.