rcymozart Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Hello all, I turned on the hotlink protection and found that nearly all of my images would not display. So I turned it back off and searched around to see if there was a solution present that would allow hotlink protection to work (as in display images to someone surfing my site, but not to someone who was linking to them externally). From what I found while searching the forums, it seems like hotlink protection is worthless. Everyone I could find who complained that their images would not load was told to turn it off. I could find no solutions that allow hotlink protection to be on and have the images display when browing from the domains allowed. So I'm wondering: is there a solution or am I correct in thinking that the hotlink protection feature is of no real use unless I'd like to have a site that will not display any images. If there is no solution at present, will one be implemented at a point in the near future? Thanks, Robert www.lifeofrobert.com PS The images that did display with hotlink protection on are not hosted in my domain for obvious reasons. One is a Creative Commons license, the other is a hit tracker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Robert, when you turn on hotlink protection, you need to add all the sites that are authorized to display the images. that includes your site as well and any sites like a guestbook where you have added your images. I suggest keeping a copy of that list in a text file, as from time to time something happens to the .htaccess file and you may need to redo the activation. Keep in mind as you probably alredy know, that cpanel only shows you a part of your .htacces file, so be careful. I like to keep a copy of .htaccess just in case. I do use hotlink myself, and it works most of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rcymozart Posted January 31, 2004 Author Share Posted January 31, 2004 Robert, when you turn on hotlink protection, you need to add all the sites that are authorized to display the images.that includes your site as well and any sites like a guestbook where you have added your images. I suggest keeping a copy of that list in a text file, as from time to time something happens to the .htaccess file and you may need to redo the activation. Keep in mind as you probably alredy know, that cpanel only shows you a part of your .htacces file, so be careful. I like to keep a copy of .htaccess just in case. I do use hotlink myself, and it works most of the time. Yes, this was done automatically when I went to enable the hotlink protection. Sites such as "http://lifeofrobert.com" and "http://www.lifeofrobert.com" were in the text box listed as "allowed." Is there something else I need to edit as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rcymozart Posted January 31, 2004 Author Share Posted January 31, 2004 It seems that the problem was that hotlink protections added "http://www.lifeofrobert.com/" whereas most people probably browse with "http://www.lifeofrobert.com". Adding an entry in .htaccess without the trailing slash for each of the allowed domains seems to have fixed this problem. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Yes, kick it sometimes it stops working. As you say, its can be worthless at times. I have to turn it off for a while and then back on later. But do make a copy of the list as it grow, because sometime when you turn it off, you lose some of the links. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 I just looked at mine, and none have a trailing / Glad you have it working Thumbs Up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rcymozart Posted January 31, 2004 Author Share Posted January 31, 2004 Thanks for the help! One last questions. How can I download a copy of the .htaccess file? My FTP client doesn't read it and CPanel doesn't seem to have a download function. Any tricks of the trade? I suppose I could make a copy of the file, rename it to something my FTP client can see, and grab it, but it seems there might be a simpler way to do this. The FTP client is SmartFTP. I also tried the Windows default, just in case, and had no luck there either (which wasn't all that surprising). I have access to a Linux machine, so maybe that will have something more likely to work? Thanks again! Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Dick Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Click on Tools > Settings > Transfer -> "Directory Listing Options" Enable the options "[-a] Show Hiden Files" & "[-L] Resolve Links" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arvind Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 what is HotLink Protection ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 Hotlinking is when another website links directly to one or more of your images or multimedia files and includes it on their web page. Not only is this theft of your intellectual property, but further more, you are paying for the bandwidth used by that site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arvind Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 so then should I enable that on my photogallery ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 arvind2100, Once you turn it on, people can still get your photo's and upload them to their server, however they can not link directly to the picture on your site "Bandwidth Theft" but people can not place the graphic from your website on theirs "<img src='http://yoursite.com/dir/file.gif/jpg/png/zip' border='0'></a>" is what it stops people from doing. If you have bandwidth missing on your site, with no reason for it to be, then I would turn it on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natimage Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 arvind2100...I cannot seem to get your photo gallery opened up! Anyway...if you have photos in there that you can foresee someone hotlinking to for some reason, then I would recomment using this feature. I enabled it long ago, and although it caused me a couple problems in the beginning, the staff here at TCH helped me through it, and I haven't had a problem since!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brokenpillar Posted January 31, 2004 Share Posted January 31, 2004 yeah i have a little fun with hotlink protection... if someone links to an image off my web server, i give them a banner ad for my site instead at least that's worth all the bandwidth hotlinking can cost, and it usually encourages them to take down the link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rcymozart Posted February 1, 2004 Author Share Posted February 1, 2004 Click on Tools > Settings > Transfer -> "Directory Listing Options" Enable the options "[-a] Show Hiden Files" & "[-L] Resolve Links" Thanks, but these were already enabled. I disabled as well, in case you mis-typed, and .htaccess still did not show on the list. I tried different combinations (one or the other only enabled, both re-enabled, etc.) and still no luck. Any more tips? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rick Posted February 1, 2004 Share Posted February 1, 2004 In Tools-Settings-Transfer uncheck the Use MLSD if available box. Restart SmartFTP and it should show hidden files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rcymozart Posted February 1, 2004 Author Share Posted February 1, 2004 In Tools-Settings-Transfer uncheck the Use MLSD if available box. Restart SmartFTP and it should show hidden files. That did the trick. Thanks everyone! Rock Sign Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lianna Posted February 1, 2004 Share Posted February 1, 2004 Moved for better organization of the forums. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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