Hotlink Protection

[Virtual Imager]

Is there a "Hotlink Protection for Dummies" out there? I have no idea what I'm doing!!! I would like to prevent hotlinking to the images on my site. I'm confused about what to enter in the "Extensions to Allow" (do I allow .jpg to protect them or do I NOT allow them? What am I allowing? I thought I was trying to disallow something!)) and "URL to redirect to" sections of the cPanel screen for enabling Hotlink Protection.

 

Please stop laughing and rolling your eyes! I'm an artist, not a website designer....

 

Virtual Imager

[natimage]

Hello...I don't know if I can answer all of your questions, but I think I can answer one.

 

I recently enabled "hotlink protection". The box that you are questioning should have the file extensions that you wish to protect!! After you activate it, you will get a confirmation screen that clarifies it. I can't explain the verbage on the first screen...I'll leave that to someone smarter than me!

 

So, put the extensions you want protected in that box. This will disallow access!

 

And I didn't put anything into the box for the "url to redirect to." I assume this is for a custom error page...

 

Hope this helps,

Tracy

[Virtual Imager]

Thanks, Tracy... it helps A LOT! I'm glad I'm not the only one confused by the 'verbage' on that first screen. What about allowing direct requests?

 

BTW... I like your photography very much. I too am researching ArtistScope's Secure Images 2.1. Have you tried their demo yet?

 

Virtual Imager

[natimage]

I want to say I remember reading something that said direct requests would still be allowed. There is really only one thing that I know about HotLink Protection...it locks the specified extensions to your domain name. This is one of the things ArtistScope's products do.

 

I'm going to see if I can't come up with my own method of security from tapping the brains of this forum family. I will probably re-vamp my entire site before I get it all figured out, though.

 

Thanks for checking out my photos. I've been so caught up in the "web design" thing that I haven't had time to keep working on the site or upload any new pics!

 

I stopped by your site as well. Very cool effects. I enjoy dabbling in the digital imaging category myself...but I don't get to do that very often at all!!

 

Gotta get back at it!!

Have a good day,

Tracy

[SEO]

1. Urls to Allow Access:

 

Add any URL's you want to allow access to the images:

 

e.g. http://www.yoururl.com

 

2. Extensions to allow (separate by commas):

 

What I would recommend (not my idea) is to create an image that simple has the text 'Remote Linking Forbidden' or something to that affect and save it as a .png file type.

 

Then insert jpg,jpeg,gif,bmp into 'Extensions to allow' (this will make sense in step 3). Really this should read 'Extensions to Protect'

 

3. Url to Redirect to:

 

Now enter the path to the png file.

 

e.g. http://www.yoururl.com/hotlink.png

 

Do not click 'Allow direct requests (i.e. entering the url to an image in your browser)'

 

Now anyone who tries to hotlink to you will get the Remote Linking Forbidden' graphic.

 

That is it.

[Virtual Imager]

Wow.... if only all instructions could be that clear and helpful!

 

One additional question though... Do I simply upload the Remote Linking Graphic to my website, or do I need to create a page to insert it into?

 

Thank You!

[SEO]

Just load it (the 'Remote Linking Forbidden' graphic) into your public_html directory (folder).

[SEO]

You must be in the middle of doing this... I just added one of your images to this page (the image on the bottom is yours). It appeared originally but now it is blocked, I do not see your redirect image though.

 

This is a way to test if everything is working.

 

Good luck.

[SEO]

I just noticed that you have all your images on one page with anchor tags pointing to the various themes.

 

Food for thought:

 

You would be much better off if you were to create individual pages for each theme. For several reasons: individual pages would load much quicker; the more content (i.e. pages) the better.

[Virtual Imager]

I added the hotlink protection from the cPanel last night... but haven't yet created the graphic or put in a redirect url. I'm working on it. Actually I'm planning a redesign of the entire site, including breaking up those pages that have more than one theme. Most of them don't, but two or three do. I tried some new editing software and totally screwed everything up (images were not appearing, links were not working on some of the pages that I edited with the new software), so now I am just trying to get the site up and working again before I do any redesign work. Luckily I had a backup of those pages as they looked before I messed with them. So I'm back at Ground Zero in terms of the edits I was trying to make.

 

Oh well, live and learn!

 

A lot of the changes I want to make are beyond my capabilities at this point. As I said elsewhere on this forum, the learning curve is HUGE!

 

I really appreciate your suggestions and your help. Thank you.

[natimage]

I created a "Remote Linking Forbidden" graphic today. If someone out there doesn't want to make their own...I'd be glad to email it to you in either .png or .gif format. It's orange and blue with a little style!

 

Tracy

[SEO]

You really need to create your own graphic ('Remote Linking Forbidden'), it should match the size of your images (assuming you are using consistent size images and height and width attributes [which you should be using]).

 

Example (if this image is resized, larger or smaller, it will look distorted).

 

[natimage]

Hi, Scott.

 

I guess I don't understand enough about how the "redirect to url" works for the Hotlink Protection. I didn't consider the size of the "forbidden" image. I understand not wanting the image to be distorted...I just don't understand how it will get distorted. Does that make sense????

 

If you can tell me a little more about exactly what happens when someone tries to link to a "hotlink protected" image, that would be great!!

 

Thanks bunches,

Tracy

[TCH-JimE]

Hi,

 

Having just handcoded my .htaccess file so that my hotlinking now works (don't ask why, my account has a qurk in it which means CPANEL doesnt get hotlinking to work) here goes:

 

Basically, say I want your image on my website, hence i put Http://www.naturalimagesweb.com/image1.jpg with all the right img src tags. Then the server looks up the list in HTACCESS and says "Hang on a second, the web page where this is asking for the image is not on my list" and then gives the refused image instead.

 

 

Jim

[TCH-JimE]

To test your hotlinking:

 

and also:

 

 

That should appear with a red X or your refused image

 

Jim

[natimage]

Ok...that all makes sense. Now, I'm led back to the question that made me ask the last question...what difference does it make what size the redirect image is? If you don't even really have to have one at all...and they are not gaining access to the original image at all...couldn't the "forbidden" image be any size?

You really need to create your own graphic ('Remote Linking Forbidden'), it should match the size of your images (assuming you are using consistent size images and height and width attributes

 

Sorry to be so demanding...

[SEO]

Sorry, I meant to address this earlier today... I forgot

 

If someone is direct linking to your image it would be html code like this:

 

><img src="http://www.yourwebsite/images/agreatshot.jpg" width="512" height="423">

 

Now, sense you are 'hotlinked protected', instead of getting 'agreatshot.jpg' they will get your 'no-linking.png' graphic. However, it will still occupy the designated area (width="512" height="423").

 

Make sense?

[natimage]

Makes perfect sense!! Thank you very much!!

 

Tracy