Banner Hotlinking

[Bec]

Ok, quick question ... how are you all handling sites that want to hotlink to your banner, but you have .htaccess in place to stop hotlinking? I'm talking for topsites recip trades, etc.

[BDBionic]

Hopefully no one is doing that to me now but a couple people have in the past before i had .htaccess in place. I simply emailed them a note requesting they change things along with the banners attached.

Most people are pretty good about hosting banners themselves but without .htaccess ya might just have to check your stats now and then to find hits to indicate someone's hotlinking and get in touch with them personally.

or configure the .htaccess to allow their domain to hotlink if you don't wanna bother with contacting em.

[Bec]

or configure the .htaccess to allow their domain to hotlink if you don't wanna bother with contacting em

Groan ... knew someone was going to say that ... thing is this site isn't mine but a clients ... and I'm not sure the guy can handle much of anything regarding maintenance... and I'm not on a webmaster retainer for constantly adding and changing stuff around in the .htaccess.

Most sites use the anti-hotlinking now, so why are top sites and banner swaps etc still asking for the url to your banner? Why not just put in the code that lets the webmaster upload the friggin thing. Sigh ... don't mind me, just stressed out a bit ... was a bad weekend.

[Chilihost]

put banners in a separate directory and put in a new htaccess file that allows hotlinking from the specified domains, ie, use your normal .htaccess file and add in entries like:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.hotlinkingdomain.com [NC]

cheers,
Luke

[McAttack]

yeah I would make a hidden directory that has the banners you need for the toplists and stuff like that. No links to it and nothing obvious in terms of the path. This way the client can use those banners for the ones that HAVE to, and anybody else will download the actual banners and host them themselves.

[CX*]

I have so much problem with people finding my banners on sites I want them to be on and hotlinking them.. so I feel your pain. Perhaps name it something else and put it in a different folder as suggested above...

Personally I don't mind people hotlinking my banners if they sign up to my toplists/trades.. this way I can change them when I want...

I don't understand toplists that want you to sign up with a banner and host it yourself and then not host their banner for you so you can link back...they want you to foot the bill for the whole trade.... just a pet peeve of mine

[Lee]

Originally posted by CX*
they want you to foot the bill for the whole trade

Well to be honest i dont see why as webmasters we shouldnt.

We are getting traffic back from them afterall

Regards,

Lee

[McAttack]

Originally posted by Lee
Well to be honest i dont see why as webmasters we shouldnt.

We are getting traffic back from them afterall

Regards,

Lee

Ya, and since the toplist owner normally feeds in some of his own traffic firstly to start it off.