Image hotlinking blocked by default |
I was just checking out the RSS reader Newsgator online which is now free and noticed all the images were coming up blocked because their program was hotlinking the images. This results in every image included within blog entries came up like this:
Those who are reading this either from this website (makeyougohmm.com) or an RSS reader which caches the images locally will see the bigger version of this “can’t see this image?” graphic. Those who see the smaller version are using an RSS reader that is hotlinking the images.
The idea behind this anti-hotlinking script is not to block RSS readers, it’s to prevent third party sites which are not RSS aggregators/readers to be blocked, but since I don’t use every RSS reader out there and/or know what server they are all coming from, I need readers help in determining what RSS readers are having the images blocked. We would like readers to be able to read the full entries including images (unless the entries are really, really long, and then sometimes we’ll break them up to be considerate). I do not expect readers to have to come to this website just to see the images in the blog posts. That sort of destroys the whole point of RSS being convenient. With this in mind, I just added Newsgator online to the list of accepted sites to be able to hotlink the images.
Now if your reader is showing the “can’t see this image” graphic, then please reply in the comments with the name of the program so that I can add to the accepted list. Developers reading this, be sure to pass along a valid referrer header. I will be happy to share the accepted RSS list with the community so that others can employ a similar script to help keep down unauthorized hotlinking on their respective blogs.
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I think you broke something. Right now all the images in all the posts on your site are the small “can’t see this image?” image… Even when looking at them directly on www.makeyougohmm.com .
Comment by Yaron — October 21, 2004 @ 2:01 pm PST
Hi Yaron - I’m not seeing that here. Are you running through some sort of proxy or something that blocks the referer info (anonimizer, firewall, etc)? It’s actually been this way for quite some time, I just posted about it today, but the .htaccess file has been in place for 6 months or so.
Comment by TDavid — October 21, 2004 @ 7:02 pm PST
Everything looks alright now… I actually looked a couple of hours after making the comment, and everything was fine. I just assumed you fixed whatever the problem was. There was certainly no configuration change on my end…
Comment by Yaron — October 22, 2004 @ 7:00 am PST
Ah, got it. I was using Bloglines as my RSS reader, and it got the blocked images. When I went directly to your site, I probably recieved back the cached images, even after refreshing the page. I see it again now, all the images I saw here look fine on Bloglines, others are blocked there and now here too… Mostly I’m using FeedDemon, which doesn’t have this problem, so I only noticed it recently.
Comment by yaron — October 22, 2004 @ 7:08 am PST
added Bloglines - I had an account for that one already too, so not sure why it wasn’t put on the list of accepted readers, but it is now. You should be able to read through Bloglines and see the images. I tested on my end through my Bloglines account and all is well. Thank you again, Yaron
Comment by TDavid — October 22, 2004 @ 7:36 am PST