It would take a long time to write a full list of features, but I'll start with a few things and edit the post from time to time to add additional information. Bear in mind that this post will be technical, and is meant mainly for technicians interested in understanding how Livigent works.
1) Category based filtering. Almost any filter has this feature, but livigent does it better. For example, if you decide to block "News", Livigent lets you specify if you want to only block sites that are 100% news, or even sites that are 10% news. To get a feel of how this works, click here to test a URL.
2) Keyword Filtering. This is a feature that lets you allow or block a page depending on the keywords. You can tell Livigent to block or allow any website that has specific keywords. K9 seems to have limited support for keywords in URL's, but it can't detect words inside the webpage itself.
Livigent can do any of the following:
- Detect how many times a word appears in a page. You can specify if you want the words to appear in the body of the page, title of the page, URL of the page, keywords of the page or any combination of these.
- You can set Livigent to only block pages that have a combination of keywords (in any of the aforementioned places). For example, if you want to block any site that sells women's clothing, you can set the filter to block any page that has the words "women" and also the word "clothing".
- You can tell Livigent to only block these keywords if they appear an X number of times on the page. For example, to only block sites that have the words "women" and "clothing" twice on the page.
- You can create very complex rules that sounds like they came straight out of a long tosfos in bava kama. E.g., if keyword X or keyword Y are in the URL, and also the body of the page has Keyword A or keyword B five times then block the site, unless it has keyword C, D and E less than 3 times...."
This feature is the most powerful feature in Livigent, since it lets you be very specific about which pages you want to block.3) Layered rules. Livigent allows you to create conflicting rules, but stack them on top of each other in order of priority. For example, let's say you 2 rules:
- A) Block sites that have 20% or more of entertainment.
- B) Allow CNN.com
4) Blocking types of pages. Livigent allows you to block/allow parts of the web based on what type of files they are. For example, you can block all videos or all images on the web (or on specific sites) with just one click.
Of course it isn't practical for each user of Livigent to setup these rules themselves. But the flexibility in the filter allows companies that use Livigent (like VCF) to create a different collections of pre-set rules that they can apply to any of their customers.
Do you know of other solutions that offer similar functionality? If yes, please share them in the comments.
Here are some ideas on the K9 wish list, which Livigent already has:
- Real-time Blacklist/Whitelist of page content (425 votes!)
- Remote/Central Administration (1,567 votes!)
- Add regular expressions to the keyword filter (126 votes)
- Allow wildcard characters in whitelist and blacklist entries
- Filter pictures (109 votes)
- Non-ASCII support for keywords (83 votes)
- Custom/advanced install option: permanent "hard" blocking (no password override) of specified catgegories
- A feature to prevent display of images of some user mentioned sites
- Submit blocked site to admin for white listing
- Block base file types like mp3, flv, etc ?? also block user from upload
- Offer configurability for mobile devices (2104 votes!)
בשולי הדברים, I'll address a myth I read on some forum that Livigent is "strict". The truth is that Livigent is an empty canvas and the rules are set only by the filter administrator, each company that licenses Livigent does it their way. Most companies offer various degrees of strictness depending on the level that the customer wants.
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