How to handle hotlinkers?

Hey, I just noticed that Dreamhost does not have any functions in its control panel tackling hotlinkers, how can we block hotlinkers and make it redirect to our site when someone hotlinks? I know there is an .htaccess way but I do not know how to do it through dreamhost panel..

There is a sort of hotlinking system under Goodies/htaccess|webdav.
Click your domain then configure a directory and follow the options at the bottom of the form.

--
Norm
Opinions are my own views and are not the views of DreamHost.
Any advice offered by me should be acted upon only at your own risk.

There are a lot of good tips for stopping hotlinking with .htaccess files with a quick google search. It wasn't terribly difficult once I started looking for resources. For me it wasn't such a horrible thing though. Initially I was tempted to block hotlinking, but changed my mind. I simply started putting my domain on the images, and let people link all they want. I realized that my site was getting advertising that I couldn't afford to pay for, and Dreamhost gives what amounts to unlimited bandwidth in my case. The other deciding factor was that hotlinking uses basically no server resources, so it was easy to make the decision in my situation.

BC Tech
Team Shocker

In reply to:
I simply started putting my domain on the images, and let people link all they want.

How effective have you found this? Do your referral logs show many visitors coming to your site from sites that have hotlinked your images?

I am tempted to do this, but I am reluctant to provide 'my' bandwidth to others without some kind of return.

In reply to:
Do your referral logs show many visitors coming to your site from sites that have hotlinked your images?

Thinking about this a little more I realise that referral logs aren't going to show where this traffic originates from. blush

Does anyone know of a way to dynamically redirect images that are hotlinked? I read the DreamHost wiki and found a way to redirect all hotlinked image to a single, static image. However, what I'd like to do is redirect anyone who links to the full-resolution image to display the smaller thumbnail view.

Any suggestions? Is this possible?

http://DigitalDisplacement.com

In reply to:
Does anyone know of a way to dynamically redirect images that are hotlinked? I read the DreamHost wiki and found a way to redirect all hotlinked image to a single, static image. However, what I'd like to do is redirect anyone who links to the full-resolution image to display the smaller thumbnail view.

Any suggestions? Is this possible?

It is certainly possible. I just needs a bit more fancy footwork with the .htaccess file. I'm not up to writing the rules myself, I'm afraid, because I don't have much regex experience.

I find this to be a very useful site for such a thing:

http://www.htmlbasix.com/disablehotlinking.shtml