How do you block specific urls and not entire domain

Question

I want block a URL on specific computer, in this case www.google.com/reader but i not want to block the entire domain of google. It is for my work machine as I don't seem to have enough self control sometimes at work not to browse.

Is there a good way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

If you're browsing via a proxy that you control, block whatever URL you don't want to see in the proxy. This may require a zeroth step of installing a web proxy; what software to use would depend on your OS and level of technical expertise. This is completely browser independent (as long as you keep the browser configured to use the proxy, of course). This will not work for https because the proxy only sees encrypted traffic, it doesn't see what URL you request.

You could configure your proxy settings to use a nonexistent proxy for the URLs you don't want to be able to access. For firefox, FoxyProxy is a possibility (I'm sure there are others); it's easy to set up, but it's also easy to work around. A more general method, which works in just about any browser that supports javascript, is to write a proxy autoconfiguration file.

Answer 2

Well, I won't answer your question directly but I will give you a solution to your problem. Leechblock and StayFocusd are two of the finest productivity browser extensions out there. I've used both and even after uninstalling them, I found myself limiting my visits to Google Reader as well, probably out of routine.

And yes, both of them do in fact lets you block subdirectories.

Answer 3

I'm sure you're well aware, but anything you configure you can easily undo, which sort of trumps the whole idea altogether. If one day you try to access the service and it's blocked, what's stopping you from going in and making a quick change? A "just this once!" sort of thing.

Anyway, if you're really determined, Fiddler can do this easily.