A lightweight, simple lightbox with basic image protection capabilities.
As of April 2026, Basic Protected Lightbox is a WordPress images plugin with 10 active installations and a 0/5 rating0. It has been downloaded 1.2K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.3+ and PHP 5.6+. Available on WordPress.org since 2019. Last updated 5 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Top alternative: Autoptimize.
This plugin provides a very lightweight, minimalist, jQuery-based lightbox for displaying full-screen versions of the images from WordPress galleries. It also gives some basic copy protection that should foil relatively unmotivated image thieves by inserting a transparent overlay over the lightbox and all gallery thumbnails. This will prevent people from copying images in your galleries via right-click or drag-and-drop. It’s not a true preventative measure, in that someone who really wants to download copies of your images will most likely find a different way, but it is a little more secure than linking directly to the full resolution versions. Image copying is pretty much impossible to fully prevent aside from just not publishing your work in the first place; my goal with this plu…
| WordPress | 3.3+ requiredTested up to 5.5.18 |
| PHP | 5.6+ required |
Added keyboard controls and logic to hide the left/right buttons if they aren’t needed.
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