Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hotlinking

fast, solid, non-lame name

allterrainbrain — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:21:46 -0800

Reliable paid file-hosting service that allows hotlinking and has a neutral, professional domain name? I'm switching to a new web hosting company because its policies are clearly right for me. This company bills according to bandwidth usage rather than on a monthly flat-fee basis. So I'll want to host my large media files with a different company, and hotlink to them from my sites.

- I want to pay in the $10/mo neighborhood if possible, to host maybe 600MB to 800MB total of mp3s and large images (all of which I own the rights to);

- I anticipate under 10GB of downloads per month total, (occasionally spiking higher, in which case I'd like non-crazy overage fees);

- I want ftp access for myself and for two or three other people (but I don't need any public ftp access, just regular http hotlinking);

- I'll go for the most neutral and professional-sounding name I can find (I don't want these files getting served from, like, myfilebuddy.com or easywebhost123.com).

This could be a dedicated file-storage company, a web hosting company, an online backup service (that allows hotlinking and the amounts of bandwidth I'm expecting) or anything else.

How do you prevent people from hotlinking photos from your typepad blog?

PenguinBukkake — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:26:15 -0800

How do you prevent people from hotlinking photos from your typepad blog? I have original content (photos) on my typepad blog (the intermediate account, not the most expensive one: should I upgrade?): they are getting hotlinked up to the wazoo by a bunch for forums. How do I avoid that? I've tried to rename some files in the "edit post" HTML window but I just deleted the images and I had to reload them. Obviously, I am technically not that savvy, at least for blogs. Thanks.

My web site's getting crushed. How to keep it alive for another day or two...

dobbs — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:25:08 -0800

Help! I'm participating in tomorrow's Blogathon and my site got mentioned today on Pitchfork because I'll be giving away music during the event. My site's getting pounded and was down for about 3 hours right after the article appeared. The thing is, I haven't even put the tracks up yet! I fear the site may go down during the 'thon or, if it stays up, my bandwidth bill will be murderous. Suggestions? Questions inside. I'm a total n00b when it comes to server shit. I'm wondering:

- way to make it so that people can't hotlink to the tracks?
- way to make it so that robot thingies can't be used to search for the tracks?
- temporary offsite places to host the music that are affordable and don't limit number of downloads?

Any other suggestions on how I can keep the site up during the event?

I'm on Dreamhost if that makes any diff. I appealed to them earlier in the week to see if they'd donate bandwidth considering the event is for charity. I got a boilerplate "we can't do that" response.

I already spent $200 on an iPod to give away in a draw for donors so don't really have more cash to throw at this event.

Prevent hotlinking from myspace.com

bwilms — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 17:30:55 -0800

I want to use my .htaccess file to specifically eliminate myspace.com profiles from hotlinking my files. My code is inside... I have used the following code (based on this example):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond % ^http://(www\.)?myspace\.net/ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER| ^http://(www\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC\
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|mp3|mov|wmv)$ - [F]

This works a little too well. When I go to my website i receive an "internal server error". When I delete the .htaccess file, I'm back in.

I have also tried this code (based on this example):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(cgi¦profiles¦www\.)?myspace\. [NC,OR]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|mp3|mov|wmv)$ - [F]

This seems to work okay, but it won't allow these files to be accessed from within my site (say, the front page of my blog). For instance, I see text, but no pictures. When I delete the .htaccess file, everything is back to normal.

Can anybody help me to write a .htaccess file that will prevent hotlinking from www.myspce.com and profile.myspace.com that will allow hotlinking from other locations (especially my own internal site)? I've Googled, searched AskMetafilter archives and followed examples, but nothing is working quite right. I need someone with experience to take a look at what I'm doing here. For what it's worth, my host is doteasy.com and I don't really know what the backend is. I am throwing the .htaccess file in my /var/www/html/ directory. If you need more info please let me know. Thanks in advance for your help.