(More) Content Filtering with IPCop

(Quite) a while ago I talked about the content filtering setup I’d implemented on my IPCop box to keep my kids safe when browsing the web.

All was well until a week ago when I split my network into wired and wireless (Green and Blue in IPCop speak). The separation worked as it should, but whenever I turned squidGuard on no web traffic would flow.

I went looking for a solution (because re-installing the add-on didn’t work) and instead found an alternative: urlfilter (which incidentally also supports SmoothWall for those that use it). urlfilter requires advproxy – an advanced proxy add-on (again also available for SmoothWall) – to function, but a quick look at the features convinced me it was worth a try so I installed them both.

They both do exactly what they say they do, and they’ve given me more control and flexibility than my previous setup. More importantly content filtering is working again, and this time it was easier – there’s an option to block all non-listed sites.

So I would highly recommend both to anyone using IPCop (or Smoothwall).