Comments on: Hotlinking? What Year is it Again? http://theappslab.com/2009/08/05/hotlinking-what-year-is-it-again/ Driving Innovation Thu, 24 May 2012 14:11:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Jake http://theappslab.com/2009/08/05/hotlinking-what-year-is-it-again/comment-page-1/#comment-8409 Jake Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:57:13 +0000 http://theappslab.com/?p=3238#comment-8409 Wow, it's been a while since I've heard someone running on IIS, at least a consumer-side site. I suppose I should switch images to prevent hotlinking, but it happens to us so rarely that I don't think it's a huge problem.<br><br>Still, maybe I should check the logs to see how much bandwidth they're stealing. Your case is typical for content owners: how to balance the cost of blocking hotlinking with the effort involved.<br><br>Thanks for the kind words and glad I can brighten your day. It's been a struggle lately. I may just be experiencing general boredom with my usual topics. Wow, it's been a while since I've heard someone running on IIS, at least a consumer-side site. I suppose I should switch images to prevent hotlinking, but it happens to us so rarely that I don't think it's a huge problem.

Still, maybe I should check the logs to see how much bandwidth they're stealing. Your case is typical for content owners: how to balance the cost of blocking hotlinking with the effort involved.

Thanks for the kind words and glad I can brighten your day. It's been a struggle lately. I may just be experiencing general boredom with my usual topics.

]]> By: Jim http://theappslab.com/2009/08/05/hotlinking-what-year-is-it-again/comment-page-1/#comment-8406 Jim Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:36:53 +0000 http://theappslab.com/?p=3238#comment-8406 People sometimes hotlink stuff off my site. However, as my site's running on IIS, it's not so easy to prevent it without installing a 3rd party application on the server which I'd have to pay more for. To prevent it, I save the name of the image folder in an include file, and change it from time to time, so that anyone hotlinking to the stuff will lose the link. <br><br>It's a lot easier to write a rule in the .htaccess file on sites hosted on apache sites to prevent hotlinking, or to replace the image they're replacing with a funny message, like the one in your post. But I guess you already know all that.<br><br>You said you were finding it hard to find things to blog about Jake - seems like you're keeping up with the same high quality content to me - getting my AppsLab email is the highlight of my working day. Everything else is tedious! People sometimes hotlink stuff off my site. However, as my site's running on IIS, it's not so easy to prevent it without installing a 3rd party application on the server which I'd have to pay more for. To prevent it, I save the name of the image folder in an include file, and change it from time to time, so that anyone hotlinking to the stuff will lose the link.

It's a lot easier to write a rule in the .htaccess file on sites hosted on apache sites to prevent hotlinking, or to replace the image they're replacing with a funny message, like the one in your post. But I guess you already know all that.

You said you were finding it hard to find things to blog about Jake – seems like you're keeping up with the same high quality content to me – getting my AppsLab email is the highlight of my working day. Everything else is tedious!

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