flexible blocker

Description

This free extension aims to be a site blocker offering more flexibility regarding permissions than every other offering on the store. By doing so, users should find it easier to stick to the blocker's restrictions.

Main features:
Standard site blocking, OR
Require users to fill out confirmation messages before temporarily allowing access restricted sites. You can choose to visit youtube.com for the next two hours, but you'll also have to type "I have taken time to think about what I am doing3 an5 won't re8ret this later on" before that.

Block/restrict sites most of the time barring certain days of month, days of week, or times of days. Time-based restrictions can be combined together to further limit amount of allowed times.

One of the main issues I had with other site blockers was that I always ended up finding legitimate reasons to temporarily deactivate them. Blanket blocking sites would work for a period of time, but grew annoying when my friends wanted to watch Netflix. Blocking sites based on time of day was a step in the right direction, but was ultimately limited by the fact that on rare occasions my work would require me to use usually unproductive sites throughout the day. Example: I use YouTube mostly to kill time, so YouTube was naturally a good candidate to get blocked. However, every once in a blue moon, I also use YouTube to watch tutorials on cooking, installing bikes, and running Docker. Waiting until after 5PM to do all this stuff is a pain.

The result of these inconveniences is that we will often "temporarily" disable or edit our blocker settings to something more permissive. But it's hard to stick to a restriction if you get in the habit of taking it down. Also, it's easy to forget to re-enable a restriction once it turns off. A good site blocker should discourage people from disabling it by making rules easy to follow. It should limit our access to unproductive sites, but make it easy for us to use them on the rare occasions where we genuinely need or deserve to.

By increasing the flexibility of its permissions, the blocker aims to make itself as non intrusive as possible. Set up your rules once, and never change them again.