My blog sent one of those automated Emails to me a few days ago, claiming that it was reaching the end of it's bandwidth.
This was rather puzzling to me, since I know that my traffic really isn't that high. So I started to dig through the ol' blog logs to see where all this bandwidth was going.
It seems that some of the pictures I put up here are being hotlinked. That means that a whole bunch of other blogs and message boards are linking to the pictures alone. Every time someone takes a look at their post or message, my blog passes along the picture.
What really bites is that I don't get any credit for my work here. The vast majority of the bandwidth thieves aren't told where the picture originates, and extra readers aren't told to come on by and read my original posts.
In other words I'm paying actual money so other blogs and message boards can keep their readers happy, and increase their readership!
There are a couple of options open to me. I could transfer the photos here to one of those picture hosting services. These are websites that will allow you to load your pictures on their server, and then you can link to them there. Some of them are even free, which would solve the problem of paying for bandwidth.
The problem with that is that those free websites have their own ads, and they place cookies on the computer of anyone who visits. I can't control that, and am leery of exposing my readers to potential viruses and malware.
Another solution is to simply change the name of the pictures here at The Handbasket. This would entail a little bit of work, and it really would just be a stopgap. People would still want to use my more interesting pictures, and the problem would simply start up again in the future as more and more blogs and message boards hotlinked to the renamed images.
It looks like I will have to look into using one of those picture hosting services, much as I hate the idea. Anyone have a different solution?
UPDATE
Thanks for all the advice, everyone. As soon as I got an idea of where to start, configuring the blog to deny hotlinking was easy.
LibertyNews pointed out that sites like Gunbloggers will be screwed over by my new No Hotlinking policy, since they always give me a return link if they feature my stuff. But the few legitimate uses of the material found here was being drowned out by the thieves. Sorry!
The biggest offender by far is this post about the Apache pistol. There is just something about that weapon that inspires people's imagination. Of course they always imagine that they are shooting, stabbing, or punching an attacker with it, but I suppose that is normal. I even get about one Email a month from people looking to buy one for regular carry, unaware that they are rare and valuable antiques.
Anyway, thanks again. We'll see if this solves the problem.
Comments (11)
It depends on how much privilege you have on your server. You might be able to use a ".htaccess" file to prevent others from deep-linking your pictures.
I can do that because I own my server, but it really depends on your hosting service. Talk to them about it.
In case you're interested, I keep my images in a special "image" directory, and this is what the .htaccess file for that directory contains:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?denbeste.nu/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?denbeste.nu [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://denbeste.nu/common/myspace.gif [R,L]
What that means is "If there is a referer, and it isn't me, and if they're trying to access GIF or JPG or PNG files, then send them the "myspace.gif" file instead of the one they asked for.
That file is small, and it's also obnoxious. Its purpose is to encourage people to remove the links to my images, because it's 1024*4096 and it alternately blinks red and blue. And it's less than 14K, so it doesn't represent an unacceptable load on my server.
The reason for making it huge is in case the person who linked to it didn't include explicit display width and height sizes in the IMG tag (which is usually the case). So it blows out their site formatting. It's almost always enough to convince blog owners or forum moderators to edit and remove the links.
Posted by Steven Den Beste | December 24, 2007 10:46 AM
Posted on December 24, 2007 10:46
There's no "switch" that your server has to prevent it? Back when I used Eponym, they had a setting you could turn on that shut down hotlinking. Unfortunately, it also stopped your graphics from feeding through the RSS. That was why I went to using Photobucket.
Posted by AlanDP | December 24, 2007 11:14 AM
Posted on December 24, 2007 11:14
I'm guilty of some of your bandwidth woes. http://www.gunbloggers.com aggregates postings from member blogs (of which you are one) and includes approximately the first paragraph, including any pictures on the site.
BUT the site ALWAYS links back to you.
I'd recommend finding another hosting provider, bandwidth is pretty damn cheap these days and unless you are getting 200k hits a day you shouldn't be hitting a quota.
You do have another option, depending on the kind of service you have. I don't recommend it, because you would break GunBloggers -- but you can setup a redirect that checks the referrer when requesting an image. If the request doesn't come as part of a page load from your site you can insert another image or block it entirely.
Posted by LibertyNews | December 24, 2007 11:21 AM
Posted on December 24, 2007 11:21
Not sure about your host (livingdot) but most provide hot linking protection. Contact them and and ask if there is a way for you to not allow remote linking of images. They should support this and it shouldn't cost you extra.
Posted by PuGz | December 24, 2007 11:44 AM
Posted on December 24, 2007 11:44
I use ExposureManager for direct linking photos on my blog, but it might be a little more than you need, especially for the price. It's meant for professional event photographers, which I'm not, but it's the best deal for unlimited storage, which I need.
I know a lot of people that use PBase that are happy with it. It's only $23/year for 500MB storage and allows direct linking (with no ads). The only issue that I have is that their direct linking code can be used by anyone who pokes through their online help files to find the format, so someone else could conceivably still link your images, but it would be much more difficult. I didn't look too far through their FAQ's, but I didn't see anything about a bandwidth limit, just storage. They have a 30-day free trial if you want to give it a try.
Jan/CascadeExposures
Posted by jan | December 24, 2007 3:13 PM
Posted on December 24, 2007 15:13
This is pretty much a solved problem. It involves a bit of mucking about with your .htaccess file, and you can find instructions on the web for how to do it. The basics are, for image URLs, you have the webserver examine the referrer field, and if it isn't your blog, you either just deny the request, or redirect it to another image.
This other image could be a very small graphic with your URL in it, and nothing else, or a nastygram (and I've seen some pretty nasty ones).
If you're concerned only with the bandwidth, then just deny the request.
I see you're using Movable Type. I'm sure there are instructions on the MT support forums. Or you can find them on the WordPress support forums too. Since the technique isn't specific to your blog software, it doesn't matter where you find the instructions. If you need more help, then just ask. While I haven't actually done it myself, I understand it enough. SayUncle has done it, and many other bloggers.
Posted by jed | December 24, 2007 3:50 PM
Posted on December 24, 2007 15:50
It _is_ possible to return a 404 or 403 error to users who are requesting images that are linked to from non hellinahandbasket.net sites - that is, if you have access to the apache configuration (or you might be able to do it with rewrite rules). First, I'd try explaining the issue to the web host and seeing if they have a solution. It's not all that hard to do.
Good luck!
Posted by rs | December 24, 2007 7:27 PM
Posted on December 24, 2007 19:27
Hi James,
there is a much better way. You can configure your server to not serve hotlinked images. Or better still, redirect the image to something else, such as an image hosted on photobucket saying "no hotlinking allowed".
If you would like help setting this up flick me an email, I would be more than happy to help.
Have a great Christmas.
Steve
Posted by Steve | December 24, 2007 8:40 PM
Posted on December 24, 2007 20:40
The polite way todo this sort of thing is to host a thumbnail on your own blog space, and have it point to the original post URL ... not the image.
But a lot of folks are just ignorant ... and need a redirect to make things a bit clearer for them.
Too bad.
Posted by Kristopher | December 25, 2007 4:37 PM
Posted on December 25, 2007 16:37
What did you end up doing?
Posted by Steven Den Beste | December 25, 2007 7:27 PM
Posted on December 25, 2007 19:27
What did you end up doing?
After the excellent suggestions above gave me a few ideas, I started to look around for instructions on how to change my apache configuration in order to deny hotlinking. But I sent an Email off to my hosting service while I did this in order to see if they had any suggestions.
They did! They said they'd take care of it.
I see after running a few Google searches of the images on my blog that it appears their word is good. What did they do? I have no idea.
But thanks for all the great advice. I take it as a matter of course when people at the range are ready to step up and help out a fellow shooter who is struggling, and there is no difference amongst bloggers.
Thanks again, everyone!
James
Posted by James R. Rummel | December 26, 2007 3:38 PM
Posted on December 26, 2007 15:38