Students working on CodeHS programs can load content from external sites, including images, fonts, videos, links to other websites, and more. To help schools maintain safe and secure coding environments, CodeHS gives teachers and admins tools to control which external websites students can access:
Whitelist Enforcement settings block all external requests in student programs by default.
The Student Website Allowlist tool works with Whitelist Enforcement to let teachers create allowlists — the list of specific external domains that students are approved to access or embed in their CodeHS programs.
Together, these tools are key to meeting your district's CIPA obligations (see the CodeHS CIPA Compliance Statement).
Whitelist Enforcement
Whitelist Enforcement is available on Pro and District licenses. If you are not sure which plan your district is on, please reach out to your CodeHS Account Manager for more information.
Whitelisting vs Blocking
CodeHS blocks known proxy and game sites by default, but no blocklist is ever fully exhaustive, and new workarounds appear constantly. Whitelist Enforcement gives your district a more airtight layer of control: rather than trying to anticipate every site to block, teachers have the option to define exactly what's allowed.
Teachers can manage their own approved domain lists for their Courses and Sections, putting the responsibility for appropriate access in the hands of the people who know their curriculum. Your district retains the ability to enforce whitelisting across the board, and these settings will not override your network configuration.
How Whitelist Enforcement Works
When your district enables Whitelist Enforcement on CodeHS, all external requests made from student programs are blocked by default. Teachers can then add approved domains at the Course or Section level so students can still access legitimate resources without opening up the broader web.
Setting Up District-Level Whitelist Enforcement
Your district can enable the setting to force a whitelist mode across all teachers and Sections district-wide — teachers cannot turn it off. This setting ensures your CIPA controls are consistent regardless of individual teacher settings.
Contact your Account Manager or email support@codehs.com to turn this setting on for your district.
Student Website Allowlist
Teachers can apply allowlists at two levels in the Student Website Allowlist tool:
Course-level — applies to all Sections using the Course
Section-level — applies only to a specific Section
A domain added at the Course level is automatically allowed in all of its Sections. Use Course-level for domains every Course's Section needs, and Section-level for domains only one Section needs.
Applying an Allowlist
Allowing Domains Individually
Navigate to the Student Website Allowlist tool in the Moderation app
Select a Course and Section from the dropdown menus
Enable the "Enforce whitelist on course/section" option
Enter the domains you want to allow and select Add Domains. To add more than one domain at a time, enter a space or a new line between each domain.
Select Save Changes
Allowing All External Domains in a Course
The Student Website Allowlist provides an easy way to allow every external domain used in your course at once. This ensures that students can access the external resources included in CodeHS assignments.
Select Suggest Domains From Course
Select Copy Domains to copy every external domain found in your Course
Paste the copied domains in the textbox and select Add Domains
Select Save Changes
Removing Domains from the Allowlist
To remove a domain from the allowlist, simply select the "X" in its row in the "Whitelisted domains" list and select Save Changes.
For more CodeHS features that help teachers and schools manage student access to public web content, check out Managing Student Access to Public Programs on CodeHS.
Whitelist Enforcement and Student Website Allowlist are available as part of CodeHS Pro. To get CodeHS Pro for your school, contact our team at sales@codehs.com.
Still have questions? Contact our team at support@codehs.com to learn more!