Building a Website That Passes Netfree and Other Content Filters

If your customers browse through Netfree and your site is blocked or shows without images, they simply will not reach you. Adapting is not complicated, but it has to be planned up front, not after the site is built.

What Netfree actually blocks

• Images of women and images that do not meet the filter's modesty rules. The image is replaced with a grey box, or the whole page is blocked.
• Unknown sites with content the filter does not recognize. Sometimes until someone requests access.
• Embedded YouTube videos, under most settings.
• Fonts and images from external domains that get blocked separately, leaving the site looking broken.

Each user can set a different filtering level, so what passes for one may not pass for another. The goal is to pass at the commonly used level.

How to build a site that passes

1. Images: subjects, places, objects, illustrations. If people are needed, men in respectable dress. For female staff, use an illustration or an icon.
2. No embedded YouTube. If video is essential, host it directly on the site.
3. All assets from your own domain. Fonts, images and scripts served from the site itself, not from external services that may be blocked.
4. Text that respects the audience. Not just a filtering matter, but a trust matter.
5. Test through Netfree before launch, page by page, on a phone too.
6. Request whitelisting from Netfree after launch, if the site is new and unrecognized.

It is not only Netfree

The same principles apply to other filters (Rimon, Etrog, Kosher phones with limited browsing). A site built clean and fast, with everything served from its own domain, passes almost everywhere.

What I do on every site

Every site I build for businesses with a religious audience is checked through Netfree before it goes live. Images are chosen accordingly in advance, fonts are self-hosted, and there is no dependence on external services that get blocked. Details on website design.

Frequently asked questions