WordPress SOPA Protest Plugins and Other Ways to Participate in Internet Blackout

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Internet Blackout Day: January 18, 2012

It’s never too late to take part in SOPA Blackout Day or Internet Blackout Day.

Wordpress.org has a post here with a lot of links about the ongoing efforts to protest Senate Bill 968.

You can learn more about Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) here:

What is SOPA and how does it work? The Stop Online Piracy Act explained

Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: “The Fight Isn’t Over”

What is SOPA?

EFF: Stop The Internet Blacklist Legislation

WordPress Plugins for SOPA Protest/ Internet Blackout

Here are the list of plugins that I recommend for the internet blackout day:

Stop SOPA Widget

I am using this one. It will only show a modal window with all the information the visitor needs to know about SOPA. It will not totally blackout the page or redirect to a blank page. The reason I am using this is because I am based in the Philippines and I just want to disseminate the information for all visitors.

Go Dark

This one is also a bit extreme as it really puts your website on “dark” or “censorship in progress“. It is SEO-friendly and you can customize the message during the protest time.

Stop SOPA Ribbon

Simply puts a ribbon that says Stop SOPA. This one is for the conservative. You can also use this along with Stop SOPA Widget.

For more extreme measures you can use SOPA Strike which will automatically redirect all users to http://sopastrike.com

If you want to experiment on other WordPress SOPA Protest plugins, you may try using other plugins tagged SOPA in WordPress Extend directory.

Alternative Method Using CloudFlare

My internet buddy Paul had written about the CloudFlare option here. If you are using CloudFlare you may want to set this up.

At first visit, the words on your site will be blacked out. Only words longer that five characters will be blacked out so not all words will be unreadable on first visit.

The code can also be found in GitHub so you can use it on any website if you wish even if you are not on CloudFlare.

I think it’s quite dramatic but if you just want to get the message across on what is SOPA is all about you can just use the WordPress plugins that I mentioned. It is SEO friendly too and you can schedule it.

Check out how it works.