Configure WebBlocker Exceptions
If you want WebBlocker to always allow or always deny access to a website, regardless of the content category, you can add a WebBlocker exception for that site. You can add a WebBlocker exception that is an exact match of a URL, a pattern match of a URL, or a regular expression.

WebBlocker does not include query strings (the part of a URL that starts with the ? character) in the categorization request it sends to the WebBlocker Server. This means that you cannot create a WebBlocker exception to deny specific queries.

Exact match

Exact matches match an exact URL or IP address, character by character. You cannot use wildcards, and you must type each character exactly as you want it to be matched. For example, if you enter an exception to allow www.yahoo.com as an exact match only, and a user types “www.yahoo.com/news”, the request is denied.

Pattern match

Pattern matches match a pattern in the URL or IP address, for example “pattern” in www.pattern.com. Make sure to drop the leading “http://” and include “/" at the end. Use the wildcard symbol, , to match any character. You can use more than one wildcard in one pattern. For example, the pattern www.somesite.com/ will match all URL paths on the www.somesite.com website. To enter a network address, use a pattern match that ends in a wildcard. For example, to match all the websites at 1.1.1.1 on port 8080, set the directory to “”.

Regular expression

Regular expression matches use a Perl-compatible regular expression to make a match. For example, .[onc][eor][gtm] matches .org, .net, .com, or any other three-letter combination of one letter from each bracket, in order. When you create a regular expression to match URL paths, do not include the leading “http://”. Regular expressions support wildcards used in shell scripts. For example:

The regular expression: (www.)?watchguard.(com|net) matches URL paths such as www.watchguard.com, www.watchguard.net, watchguard.com, and watchguard.net

The regular expression: 1.1.1.[1-9] matches all IP addresses from 1.1.1.1 to 1.1.1.9.

Regular expressions are more efficient than pattern matches, in terms of CPU usage. For best performance, we recommend that you use regular expressions rather than pattern matches to define your WebBlocker exceptions, when several exceptions are configured. You can create a regular expression that is equivalent to a pattern match. For example, the pattern match .hostname.com/ is equivalent to the regular expression ^[0-9a-zA-Z-_.]{1,256}hostname.com.

For more information about regular expressions, see About Regular Expressions.

WebBlocker Exception Types
You can configure two types of WebBlocker exceptions:

WebBlocker action exceptions

WebBlocker action exceptions are configured in the Exceptions tab of each WebBlocker action. These exceptions apply only to the WebBlocker action in which they are defined and are not used by other WebBlocker actions.

Global WebBlocker exceptions

Global WebBlocker exceptions are configured in the WebBlocker Global Settings. Global exceptions can be used by multiple WebBlocker actions and eliminate the need to add the same exceptions to multiple actions.

In each WebBlocker action, you specify whether the action checks the global exception rules in the WebBlocker global settings. For more information, see Check Global Exceptions and Remove Duplicates.

You can configure global WebBlocker exceptions in Fireware v12.3 and higher. (Click Below for the Tech Note and screen shots)

https://www.watchguard.com/help/docs/help-center/en-US/Content/en-US/Fireware/services/webblocker/wb_exceptions_add_c.html

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