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gazette
Issue # 201 (07/21/2003)
Net Economics & EthicsLooking inward at the effects of the Internet on the Economy, as well as tackling some issues related to security, fraud, theft, and generally "being bad" online... |
| Coders Corner |
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In keeping with the theme of this week's Gazette, we're going to focus on eliminating another facet of "greed" and "entitlement" -- bandwidth stealers. You know the type... that lazy Webmaster that found the cool images you have on your Web site, and rather than creating their own, or even downloading them and uploading them to their own site, they'll link directly to yours, making YOU pay the bandwidth fees so that your copyrighted images can be shown on their Web site. Pigs.
If your Web server runs on Apache (and most of them do), this problem can be easily solved. It does not require using separate software, but rather an Apache extension called "mod_rewrite." This extension allows you to tell Apache to change (rewrite) URLs on the fly. We use it here at JimWorld in our forums. Try going here: http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums See what happens? You get dumped immediately to the "right" URL without a secondary redirect. Apache still shows you the right thing, but your browser location bar changes on the fly, and from that point forward, everything works properly. Protecting your images works in much the same way. What we do is tell Apache that if an image gets called, and the referring URL is NOT from your domain (that is, some other domain is trying to pull up an image), to either show them a broken image, or another image of your choosing (maybe a "Stop Stealing My Graphics" image?). Here's how you do it: Create a new file in the root of your domain and name it .htaccess. In this new file, enter the following lines: Example 1 -- Returning a 403 Forbidden (broken image) in place of the hotlinked image:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG)$ - [F]
Example 2 -- Returning another image in place of the hotlinked image:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG)$ http://your_server.com/bad.gif [R]
You will need to change your_domain.com to whatever your domain is, or what your host's domain name is. Also, you need two lines, one without the www and one with the www, so people coming to your site either way will not be blocked from seeing the images. Save this .htaccess file and upload it to the directory on your server containing the images, or any folder lower than that directory.
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Read the Coders Corner section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
JimWorld Member comments and feedback ...
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:35
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:43
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:57
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 04/19/2006 04:10
Posted By: alfie1848
Posted By: alfie1848
Thank you for your review, I will benefit from your suggestions. I have one
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
question though. You said "In the source, you really need a meta description
for each page just as you do with any web site." How do I do this with blogger?
Posted On: 01/04/2008 08:04
Posted By: boltonuv
Posted By: boltonuv
This "Scumbag of the Week" article is irresponsible. I had not trouble at all in receiving the following response from SpamArrest:
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
"Hi James,
Thank you for your email.
James, what you see there is absolutely wrong and is done to misguide our users and our new customers from Spam Arrest. We have over 1.5 million customers with us including you. You have been with us for a very long time, James. You can check with any of your contacts whether they have received any junk emails from us. We never do such a thing and its completely against our ethics! We hate spam as much as you do and so, along with stopping it, we make sure that none of our customer's emails are noted as spam. We warn our customers from sending bulk emails about the fact that their contacts might misunderstand their bulk emails as spam and will turn against them and Spam Arrest. A company following only such healthy practices can never do such a thing like spamming. What we value the most is our customer's trust and we will make all efforts to retain that in the best way possible. We never admit your personal information to any third party under whatsoever circumstances. You will find a whole lot of misleading things like this in Internet, James. We have friends and foes like anyone else in this planet.
I hope you will understand us the best way possible, James. Please do let me know if you need any further clarifications regarding this.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest"
In the 3 years that I have used SpamArrest, I personally have never received one complaint from anyone that has been 'spammed' from any theoretical 'spam list' that SpamArrest may have created. I think that their statement above makes it clear that they would not do this.
I behooves you to publish a retraction.
Jim Bolton
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