Getting sick of pirates!

When I had a few websites, I had someone copy my site, but what was worst was they were hotlinking the images from my servers! So I made a copy of the images (So it would look the same on my site) and replaced all of theirs with different ones :) I've never seen such a mess in my life ;)
 
The best way there is to set up hotlink protection - so it only shows the images when loaded from within your own pages. Changing image locations will affect the content that search engines will have.
 
The best way there is to set up hotlink protection - so it only shows the images when loaded from within your own pages. Changing image locations will affect the content that search engines will have.

The site I was talking about I had only set up for about just less than a week - so I wasnt too worried about SEO just yet
 
How are they getting access to your code? or is it just normal html/css and they are downloading it directly ?

If the code is in asp/.net/php and they have the code then you have bigger problems then just someone copying your designs.
 
pirate%20jacksmller.jpg


It was him!!1!!11

Honestly though I don't know how people can just copy code, don't they have any pride in making something for themselves?
 
Have you contacted the owners? It may be that they are unaware that the monkey they've hired to make their site has pilfered your design :)
 
What about html/javascript obsfuscation tools?

Do they mess up SEO?

It would at least make things more difficult if you ran a script to remove white spaces/formatting and maybe rename the placeholders to be less helpful in your released code.
 
What about html/javascript obsfuscation tools?
No such thing. The most obfuscation you can do is remove line breaks and unnecessary spaces, or in JS rename variables and function names.

OP: Why not just see the pirating a compliment? You're not losing money, you're not losing time, but out of 1000s of sites, yours was worth copying.
 
How are they getting access to your code? or is it just normal html/css and they are downloading it directly ?

If the code is in asp/.net/php and they have the code then you have bigger problems then just someone copying your designs.

haha, no, its just the html/css and javascript (and flash in the case of the Proline rip) Obviously they cant copy any of the php
 
OP: Why not just see the pirating a compliment? You're not losing money, you're not losing time, but out of 1000s of sites, yours was worth copying.

If it was a personal site, or someone just experimenting, then I'd agree. What really annoys me is both of these have been ripped by other web agencies and re-sold to their clients.

We're only a small agency, but we work really hard on producing outstanding work - its a bit gutting when someone nicks it and puts it on the web as their own.
 
The only thing I can think of doing is populating the page using javascript and interacting with the DOM. This should stop the simple method of 'right click, copy paste'.

You can also wrap each page (be it javascript, css, html etc..) in a php wrapper (for instance) which only returns true if the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']is the one which is calling the selected file. That way you can't easily view the file they want to rip off.

Of course there are ways round all of these. The simplest way would be to send a polite email telling them to stop it, or you'll complain to their host...
 
That earthwalk one is terrible.

I'd contact the people who have been the unsuspecting chumps to the pirates & contact the pirate's hosts. If possible they might be able to remove it.
 
If it was a personal site, or someone just experimenting, then I'd agree. What really annoys me is both of these have been ripped by other web agencies and re-sold to their clients.
True, but the people who bought the site from the pirate resellers will probably never have contracted you to make one anyway, so again - you as an agency haven't lost anything.

Again, take it as the height of compliments! :D
 
Obfuscate something in you .js that looks fairly innocent but when called displays a transparent gif from your main server. Then if stuff like this happens again its goatsse time.
 
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