Stopping hotlinking from my site

Wossi · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:22

After looking through my web stats I noticed a site in Spain was using images from my site without asking. Can I make it so that my images can only be used on certain sites. I've heard about a .htaccess file but after a quick google, i'm now lost. Any help would be great thanks.

Adz · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:28

If you look in your hosting provider's control panel, you will probably find you have an option which will set this up for you automatically

.

daven1986 · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:33

change the name of the pictures you use on your site, and replace the hotlinked pictures with some ******?

SiriusB · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:39

Adz said:
If you look in your hosting provider's control panel, you will probably find you have an option which will set this up for you automatically .

While this is true for the most part, not all hosts may provide it.

Either way http://www.workingwith.me.uk/articles/scripting/mod_rewrite is a good read.

Around a third of the way in the article specifically covers hotlinking and its prevention. It even shows you how to replace the image with something not very nice

Wossi · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:47

So basically the code I need is

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?somesite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://www.somesite.com/nasty.gif [R,L]

So for example I would change it to

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?forums.overclockers.co.uk/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://www.somesite.com/nasty.gif [R,L]

and any image posted here would be allowed?

Or have I got it wrong?