October 01, 2004
Bandwidth, Hotlink Protection, etc.
This site’s bandwidth usage has increased severalfold over the past year…
Rather than upgrade my hosting-plan again, I’ve decided to try economising on bandwidth by cutting out the category indexes I never used, and by introducing hotlink protection. When I first started writing on-line, I did a certain amount of hotlinking myself, and so I can hardly resent others making use of my bandwidth in the same way: also, very few of the images here are truly my own, most having originated in books, or on other websites. If anyone really wants to continue hotlinking to any of the images here, then send me a mail, and, depending on the circumstances, I may enable it.
Posted by misteraitch at October 1, 2004 09:40 AM | TrackBackI've been visiting your weblog for a while. I also worry about hotlinking but don't know any simple way to prevent people from hotlinking my pictures. What kind of protection do you use?
Thanks :)
Posted by: rosa on October 1, 2004 03:02 PMRosa: the software my web-host provides (CPanel) includes an option to automatically prevent hotlinking, except from a list of designated URLs.
Posted by: misteraitch on October 1, 2004 11:53 PMGood hotlinking article here:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hotlinking/
mister: if you ever want to switch hosts, you might want to check out:
phpwebhosting.com
They are who I use. Judging from your weblizer stats, you get about the same amount of traffic my site does. They are $9.99 a month flat for unlimited bandwidth - no upgrading or other crazy hidden stuff. They just ask you don't do crazy stuff like try and host a pirate video or music archive, or use your account for a porn site.
Posted by: Charles on October 2, 2004 12:08 AMThanks!
Posted by: rosa on October 5, 2004 01:20 AMJust wanted to say thanks for alerting me to the existence of that function on CPanel... (Perhaps it's about time I worked out what some of the other things do as well)
Posted by: Sharon on October 6, 2004 09:54 AMYou can protect your bandwidth by using ISAPI filters that way nobody in hell can consume your images for their own purpose. It is called Leech Blocker by Michael Brumm and is located at http://www.michaelbrumm.com/leechblocker.html
Posted by: Dude on November 1, 2004 01:24 AMSorru forgot to mention that blocker works for IIS only. Havn't tested in other Webservers.
Posted by: Dude on November 1, 2004 01:25 AM