URL Blocking
Once you’ve installed Focus, you will realize how simple it can be to block anything that is sabotaging your productivity.
But don’t be fooled: There is a RIGHT way and a WRONG way to tell Focus what to block.
You need to know precisely what you are telling Focus to block (or not to block).
Otherwise you’ll end up losing access to websites that are valuable for getting work done.
Even worse, you may end up on distracting websites you definitely remember telling Focus to block.
This brief guide will tie all loose ends and solve any confusion you may be having.
How To Block Entire Domains In Focus
Blocking a domain will block every single website associated with the domain.
For example, let’s say you want to use Focus to block ALL of Facebook.
When you go to your Focus blocklist (reminder of the pathway) and add a new website, type in the following:
*.facebook.com
This tells Focus to block the main domain itself and every single subdomain on this page.
This is important to remember, as typing the Facebook URL the wrong way into Focus will result in a completely different outcome.
One might intuitively type in the following to block the entire Facebook domain:
Facebook.com
This will block the main Facebook domain, including www.facebook.com. Removing the “www” prefix will tell Focus to prevent access to other versions of this site (for example, mobile versions usually have a “m” prefix).
What this will NOT do, however, is block a website such as:
https://developers.facebook.com
How To Block A Specific Page With Focus
Sometimes, we need to block a certain URL but do not want to block off the entire domain associated with the URL.
The trick to doing this is starting your entry with “http” (or “https”) before you type in the URL.
Let’s say you want to block the Advertising page on Facebook ONLY, but not all of Facebook.
In this case, you would type:
https://www.facebook.com/advertising
This tells Focus to only block this specific webpage. It will not block other subdomains of Facebook.com, nor will it block Facebook.com itself.
Please see the Advanced URL Blocking page for more information on how to further customize the types of websites you want to block.