If You're a Webmaster, Read This

[Jason Dunn]

Since we've been going through server hell lately, I started looking into the details of how the server is being used, where the traffic is coming from, etc. One of the things I noticed is that there are certain Web sites out there who have been linking directly to images off our server - and not linking to our stories either. I want to give them a chance to remove the links before I do anything further (like name them publicly - or worse :twisted:), but on Sunday alone this site accessed two JPEG photos we have on our server 10,000+ times in total. That's just one day, and it went even higher on Monday. :?<br /><br />There are a few dozen smaller sites that also link to our images, but the accesses are all under 100 hits per day so it's not a large burden on our server, and most link back to us in some way (though not all). Most of the larger sites that do this link to our images or photos, and write their own text.<br /><br />I admit it - when I first started Pocket PC Thoughts, I did the same thing fairly often with software & hardware. It was easier and faster for me to link to someone else's image, and I figured "Hey, I'm a small site, they won't notice right?". As the site grew in popularity, and I was faced with increasingly high bandwidth and hosting bills, I quickly realized that it was irresponsible for me to link directly to images on smaller sites. By linking to their images, even if we were linking to their stories or articles, we were potentially putting them in a bad position due to bandwidth draws.<br /><br />Today we copy images over to our server 99% of the time - the exception would be screen shots from Handango Pocket PC applications or the occasional photo from a CNET article. We're not perfect, but we try to avoid linking whenever possible.<br /><br />If you're a Webmaster, take a hard look at your linking policy - even if you think you're causing no harm, you just might be.

[Wes Salmon]

A quick work around for this type of stuff is to use apache mod rewrite to serve "not allowed" images to anyone viewing your images from a page that isn’t offering a valid referrer (i.e. pocketpcthoughts.com)

I only used this method when hosting "exclusive" or otherwise high quality photos that not everyone had access to from the source, and would be target of bandwidth leeches. I'd put these photos in an "exclusive" directory so I didn't have to re-write my .htaccess rules each time got new photos that I didn't want to have leeched.

The only problem I found with this method was that those paranoid people who block referrers (I admit, I was one once myself) will get the "not allowed" image instead of the real image since they are not providing a valid referring URL for it.

[Gerard]

Aside from the obvious rudeness of image linking without even credit posted, there's also the reliability issue. For example, if anyone accessed one of these 'pirate' pages while your server was down any number of times in the past couple of days, their viewers wouldn't be seeing anything but perhaps placeholders. That's bad business. I think it's just wise as a general practice to host 100% of your images and files. That way, no one will be disappointed, unless your whole site crashes... in which case they won't notice just one or two images missing anyway. And it pleases the controlling aspect of my personality. :)

[Paul P]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

[ECOslin]

I have more than once linked images from other web sites, I do tend to give credit as to where I got them from. I had not thought of this as a problem for the website from which I filched the image from. I'd say some of the image links may not be the fault of the sysop, but may be as the result of some of the user posts.

Is it possible to dump article(user or sysop loaded) images after a certain period of time? Maybe replace with a 5k placeholder(or even a reduced detailed version of the same image).

Image size: 75k last week, 50k this week, 25k the week after, 13k later on.

Edward

[Jason Dunn]

A quick work around for this type of stuff is to use apache mod rewrite to serve "not allowed" images to anyone viewing your images from a page that isn’t offering a valid referrer (i.e. pocketpcthoughts.com)

We've considered that, only problem is that it uses CPU resources, and we're stretched a little thin at the moment...we might try it in the future if the other sites don't relent.

[heov]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

hmm, off topic, but what is that iPaq shown? It seems like it was modified to had a cellular technology, is that right? I've never seen it before...

[gmoehl]

Images can eat up a great amount of bandwidth. When I did the Veggietales review, each image was only 20k, but so many people looked at the review that the server was processing 6 Gigs of data per day. 8O

So now we have to limit the number of images per review.

-Geoffrey
Pocket PC Life Review

[Paul P]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

hmm, off topic, but what is that iPaq shown? It seems like it was modified to had a cellular technology, is that right? I've never seen it before...

Not exactly sure what modifications were made to that iPaq, but I am sure that the person who did it knows his stuff.

(Sorry, I didn't mean to derail the thread with my post...I was hoping someone could shed light on how address locations of those images on the server were hidden)

[mccollin]

I believe that image linking is pretty low, if done as a normal course of business. I'm a pretty small site so far, so not a big problem, but I am trying to link nothing...even Handango screen shots. The best thing I saw someone do for this was on eBay where image linking is rampant. The guy that was having his images linked found out and changed the image to something incredibly embarrassing. When you went to the eBay auction site, all the guys images said something like "Don't buy from this guy, he's a thief and is stealing my images!!!". That was superimposed on all the images... pretty funny. Basically, if you are linked, then someone could embarrass you pretty badly. Just a thought... if you wanted an easy way to properly teach a lesson.

The other thing to keep in mind, and I'm sure it's happening on my site, is that when people post messages, if html is enabled, then they can link like crazy, and probably will. I don't know how you control that, except to hope that those threads don't get hit too badly. What I'm doing is having the moderators grab the images and edit the post to correct it... but we are small. You'd have a hard time doing that....

:roll:

[mobileMike]

I am surprised you do not watermark the images on your site. I place "ConnectedUser.com" text across all the images on my site. It detracts from the image, but not that much. It also gives credit to your site even if the website does not.

http://connecteduser.com/images/pda_email/OutBud_a.gif

- mike

[yada88]

I have seen some creative ways people have chosen to address this issue. My personal favorite is replacing the linked image with a custom created image saying something like "This site is run by morons/indolent...etc. It usually takes a while for them to realize why there page is insulting them. If you want to be curtious about it, you could put an image there with just a pocketpcthoughts advertisement in place of the link. I think you get the basic idea.

[Schrijver]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

I can view the location though...

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/review/cdma.files/image001.jpg

Just look at the source view!

[mpattman]

Hi Jason,

My site is also on a Rackshack box and I use the following code in my .htaccess file in the root of my website to stop image theft. It replaces the requested image with a blank one.

(domain names and excess stuff removed)


&lt;.htaccess>
Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes

#stop image theft
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pocketpcthoughts.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://pocketpcthoughts.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG)$ http://www..pocketpcthoughts.com/images/blank.gif [R]


I hope that this helps.

[Malmer]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&amp;no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

They are using VML (vector markup language). So basically it is XML namespacing. It is an image object, but a vml image, which doesn't trigger the &lt;img> tag. So they define "v" to be the namespace (&lt;html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">) for the vml, and then add the vml behaviour to all v tags (&lt;style>v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}&lt;/style>). Then it is just tagging like this: &lt;v:imagedata src="cdma.files/image001.jpg" o:title="001"/>

Didn't understand anything? Read up on behaviours and xml. :)

[Malmer]

It is actually a very cool coded site. Could have been done in some editor though... If not then respect to the coder.

[innersky]

you should never, ever link to someone else his images. Period.

[Kirkaiya]

This reminded me of a website I saw not long ago:

http://www.metalpda.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=review&amp;no=3%20

You cannot link the images or even view their location on the server. Always wondered how they did it.

They are using VML (vector markup language). So basically it is XML namespacing. It is an image object, but a vml image, which doesn't trigger the <img> tag. So they define "v" to be the namespace (&lt;html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">) for the vml, and then add the vml behaviour to all v tags (&lt;style>v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}&lt;/style>). Then it is just tagging like this: &lt;v:imagedata src="cdma.files/image001.jpg" o:title="001"/>

Didn't understand anything? Read up on behaviours and xml. :)


Ahh.. I'm so glad you posted the answer, or I would have gone and looked thru the HTML source myself (always better when other people do it!! :-) )

Interestingly, though, if you're using Mozilla 1.0/Netscape 7 (possibly earlier versions, but I only tried on Mozilla 1.0), you can right-click, choose "Properties", and it does give the proper URL - possibly a different version of the page is rendered depending on the browser, i am really too lazy to compare them... just thought people would want to know they could use Mozilla to easily get around the namespace method (and it's a great browser anyway)

[sweetpete]

Jason,

As your site is starting to get quite a bit busier, you're going to notice this more and more. I think people have suggested all the remedies, but the ones I've found to work best on other sites are:
1. Watermarking with your site address and logo. As long as it's done right, it doesn't detract from the image and anyone else using it is busted automatically.
2. Block the access to the images. I know you said that puts a bit of load on the server, but you don't have to do it for all. I'm sure you monitor the site quite regularly, so you can figure out if someone is leaching the images off you. If you can get rid of the one or two sites that are doing it often, you may reduce the server load and bandwidth sufficiently to offset the overhead from checking the referrer.
3. As an alternative to blocking it, if you notice someone doing it, so the swap that guy did on Ebay. I think that was one of the more ingenious ways of doing it, plus you make it an advert to your site. I know you probably don't want to get into a pissing match with other sites given your a classy guy, but sometimes it's worth it.

Good luck.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I think we are drifting towards the conversation we had a few months ago about how somethingawfull handles situations of this type! (i.e. put up a 'special' picture in place of the one being linked to 8O). NOT nice.

The way www.tech-report.com did it was much nicer. The replaced pictures came up saying that 1 year old kids were running the site.

[sweetpete]

If you're referring to my post, I wasn't trying to say they should be nasty pix. Just something along the lines of the Ebay switch where it's a picture stating that the picture was being used without permission and that people could go to read the article and see the original at PPC Thoughts

[Steven Cedrone]

I think we are drifting towards the conversation we had a few months ago about how somethingawfull handles situations of this type! (i.e. put up a 'special' picture in place of the one being linked to 8O). NOT nice.

Trust me, there is no way Jason (and most web masters, for that matter...) would ever do what somethingawfull did...

Steve

[Jason Dunn]

I am surprised you do not watermark the images on your site.

That would simply take too much time - I don't consider it a viable option for the speed with which we need to post. We've done it on very unique images, but day to day, nah.

[Daniel]

Hi Jason,

It sounds like you should prevent external linking using HTAccess. It might cost you some cycles but the leechers are costing you more you know. Better of stopping these people rather than paying for it yourself. If you can't watermark that is.

Actually, I was just thinking, you could use the HTAccess method to just block the worst offenders couldn't you? I'm not sure how to do it myself but you could just prevent the really bad sites while allowing the smaller sites to continue linking. Just a thought.

Daniel